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Book_A_ 

Copyright N n ._ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




















































































THE BELIEVER FREE 
FROM THE LAW 




THE BELIEVER FREE 
FROM THE LAW 


BY 

C. O. ROSENIUS 


TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, 
BY 

ADOLF HULT 




Rock Island, III. 
AUGUSTANA BOOK CONCERN. 






BTu 


COPYRIGHT, 1923, 

BY 

AUGUSTANA BOOK CONCERN 


Printed in the United States of America. 



ROCK ISLAND, ILL. 

AUGUSTANA BOOK CONCERN, PRINTERS AND BINDERS 

1923 


MAR -5 *23 

© Cl A 696647 

Ai b I 



CONTENTS 


PAGES 

Life and Writings of Rosenius.— 

An Appreciation . 7—22 

I. The Importance of the Believer’s 

Freedom from the Law. 23—26 

II. The Meaning of This Freedom.. 27—35 

III. Who Enjoy This Freedom?. 36—45 

IV. Why Freedom from the Law Is 

Necessary . 46—51 

V. Freedom and Remaining in Grace 52—67 

VI. Freedom and True Holiness. 68—78 

VII. The Ground of This Glorious 

Freedom . 79—99 

VIII. A Brief and Blessed Summary.. 100—115 

IX. The Final Application. 116—132 


















Life and Writings of Rosenius 

An Appreciation 

A spiritual masterpiece of clear, deep and in¬ 
tensive Bible study is here presented to the 
Church of America. It may well be reckoned 
among devotional classics. This is Scripture- 
research at its very best. Bible students at home, 
in schools, in vocational pursuits will find it a 
model of inquiry into the heart of the Word of 
God, not merely about the Word. Christ and 
His grace forms its centre. The prospects 
opened up in Christ for redeemed souls is its 
song. Seekers after salvation will have blest aid 
in finding faith and Christian certainty. 

Its author has not before been known in Amer¬ 
ica by any published volume in English. Carl 
Olof Rosenius, Lutheran lay-preacher and leader 
of a mighty spiritual awakening during the last 
century, must doubtlessly be called the greatest 
popular Scripture expositor among laymen in the 
Church of the Reformation. This may seem a 
surprising statement. But a study of the works 
of various lands forces that conviction upon us. 
Only Bogatzky (1690—1774), the Silesian no¬ 
bleman, approaches Rosenius, without having that 

7 



8 


wonderful reach, lucidity, and power of lasting 
appeal distinctive of Rosenius. “Brilliant gifts”, 
which a biographer (Dibelius) says were want¬ 
ing in the consecrated and spiritual Bogatzky, 
were eminently marked in Rosenius. 

“The Believer Free from the Law” gives 
a plain understanding of a seldom clearly pre¬ 
sented teaching in the Word: The state of 
grace (Rom. 5. 1). In a fresh evangelical way 
it makes the prayerful Scripture-student see what 
we possess, and what is wrought, if we come to 
Christ as penitent believers, and find all in 
Him, through faith alone. And in an age when 
the religious life is so moralized and self-suffi¬ 
cient as to-day, it will, of course, be of utmost 
importance to learn from the Scriptures what it 
truly signifies that a sinner may stand in grace 

with God. That it is a state of fellowship, rest- 

• 

ing in the blood and merit of Christ, that it is a 
constant relation to the faithful Redeemer and 
Lord, that so long as there is true faith in Christ, 
however weak that faith, we are, in spite of all 
sins and frailties, His beloved children — this 
glorious content of the state of grace the restless 
and experimenting souls to-day need to be taught, 
I may say, from the inner organism of the Word, 
its total spirit and whole economy of salvation. 
That will test to the finish the genuineness of 
their condition. It will for the anguished, but 
still faithful, also be a sweet and comforting re- 

• ' 


9 


lease. How it puts “a new song” (Is. 42. 10; 
Rev. 5. 9) into their heart, upon their lips, into 
their life! Their testimony will not remain 
words, but “winged things, with colors dipt in 
heaven.” Christ increases. We decrease (John 
3. 30). His redemption looms big. Our sins sink 
into insignificance, for His grace abounds more 
exceedingly (Rom. 5. 20). A flood of trans¬ 
figuration light falls on our sonship with God in 
Christ. Because the nervous Christianity of our' 
time has so frequently become estranged from the 
“state of grace” teaching of the Word, it lacks 
peace, joy, power, and wisdom in the Holy 
Spirit. It agitates religiously rather than “rests 
in the Lord” (Ps. 37. 7) believingly. It has 
grown so critical of what it calls “impractical 
Christianity,” that with all its stupendous plans 
and amazing achievements in church work, its 
voice is well nigh husky with the long outcry: 
‘Give me success, and power, and joy, or I die.’ 
The more it strains its will, the more it grows 
“troubled about many things” (Luke 10. 41). 
Even its very Bible-study often becomes a fritter¬ 
ing inquiry for detailed knowledge in the Bible 
Book, while to “lay hold on the life eternal” 
and to “fight the good fight of the faith” (I Tim. 
6. 12) becomes the duty of itinerant inspira¬ 
tion^ that are to grip the religious audiences. 
Hence there is a feverish seeking of man-made 
substitutes. Among the most subtly dangerous 


10 


of these substitutes is that “perfect holiness” of 
our life, and our work, an error to-day trapping 
zealous, but uninstructed souls. Our always 
frayed garment of holiness replaces Christ’s royal 
robe of perfect righteousness. “Zeal for God, 
but not according to knowledge” (Rom. io. 2), 
glowingly and passionately thrusts itself forward 
in the room of “the grace and knowledge of our 
Lord Jesus Christ.” Not seldom do we find pit¬ 
ifully serious hearts that are frantically looking 
for the “power of the Holy Spirit,” as they call 
it, and their need is: A simple penitence and a 
plain faith in the merits and righteousness of 
Christ their Saviour. 

Insight into “the state of grace”, when 
changed through faith into a Spirit-worked liv¬ 
ing experience, steadies Christian faith and life. 
It hallows our walk. The life of believers be¬ 
comes evangelical and through faith alone ac¬ 
ceptable for Christ’s sake, by His covering merit. 
Oh, how the Church of America needs this truth 
of Scripture and of sound Christian experience! 
In this special theme Rosenius is a master like 
his still greater teacher, Martin Luther. 

A few data from the life of Rosenius will in¬ 
terest American readers. 

Carl Olof ‘Rosenius was born in romantic 
Northern Sweden at Nysaetra, February 3, 1816. 
H is father was a vicar, a man of piety, and held 


11 


in esteem by the Christians of his region. From 
his mother, daughter of a school teacher, Rose- 
nius inherited that keenness and clarity of mind 
so prominent in his preaching, writing, and care 
of souls. Through the reading of Bishop Pon- 
toppidan’s searching book, “The Mirror of 
Faith”, itself a writing of age-long influence, the 
fifteen-year-old schoolboy broke forth cheerily 
and thoughtlessly: “Well, then it is best to mir¬ 
ror our faith!” Little did he reckon the signifi¬ 
cance of his words. His young heart was pierced 
by the truths he read in the volume. After a 
severe spiritual struggle he found deliverance 
through faith in the Saviour. During that strug¬ 
gle he received remarkable spiritual guidance 
from a Christian woman of exceptional spiritual 
experience. Rosenrus became an ardent student 
of Scripture and of Luther. When he had fin¬ 
ished his College course at Hernosand, 1837, 
he had already for a year preached, by permission 
of the Bishop of the Diocese. From the start he 
proclaimed with ringing power and with the 
gripping clearness of actual experience how 
worthless our own deeds and virtues are for the 
gaining of God’s grace in Christ. Right early 
he witnessed the blessed fruits of such preaching. 
It established him the more in his life’s main 
theme: Saved by grace through faith alone. 

In 1838 he entered the University of Uppsala, 
with the ministry in view. From boyhood he 


12 


had meant to follow in his father’s footsteps. 
But during his University career his health be¬ 
gan to decline. Prayers for recovery seemed un¬ 
availing. His financial condition was straitened 
through the poverty of his home. In May, 1839, 
he left the University for a tutorship in a noble¬ 
man’s family. Doubts, both doctrinal and spir¬ 
itual, assailed him with intensity, as they will 
most experienced Christians. An English pas¬ 
tor, named Scott, resident at the time in Stock¬ 
holm, gave him welcome spiritual counsel in his 
Christian life’s most fearsome trial. And the 
day broke anew with rosy radiance! His ac¬ 
quaintance with Scott grew into a warm personal 
friendship, in the midst of which, however, he 
kept the credal distinctions clear. This the more 
unusual, considering his youth. Rosenius now 
preached every Saturday from New Year’s, 1840. 
H is fervent love of direct Scriptural study and 
preaching made him averse inwardly to the dull, 
deadening theological status of the Universities. 
So, after conferring with his home, and with 
friends, and after much prayer to learn the will 
of God, he became the assistant of Scott. 
Though of another creed, Scott never proselyted. 
Rosenius always shunned such who enticed the 
flock spiritually in the interest of another Con¬ 
fession. Rosenius was, and remained, soundly 
and inflexibly Lutheran. His joint labor with 
Scott was due to circumstances of the times and 


13 


of the city he lived in, and to the heart-breaking 
callousness of the Church of his land. God in 
His providence directed the fellowship with 
Scott, so that its undeniable “irregularity”, as it 
has been called, nowise lessened Rosenius’ own 
confessional firmness. When Scott in 1841 went 
on a tour to America, Rosenius preached in his 
church Sunday evenings, and, upon Scott’s re¬ 
turn, alternately with him. It was in the large 
Bethlehem church, often used even by Confes¬ 
sional churchmen, a sort of Mission. In Janu¬ 
ary, 1842, he became joint-editor with Scott of 
“The Pietist”, a devotional organ of immense 
influence through all of Scandinavia, and even in 
our own land. In March, the same year, a 
Stockholm mob assaulted the English preacher in 
his church. Denominational liberty was not then 
in force. Scott had to leave the country. The 
group of Christians that had gathered about him 
now came, fortunately, under the sole leadership 
of Rosenius, the strictly Lutheran Pietist. Ro¬ 
senius became sole editor of “The Pietist.” A 
free missionating and soul-quickening activity be¬ 
gan, grew to great proportions, and extended its 
influence by degrees over the whole country and 
to neighboring lands, Norway, Denmark, Finland, 
to the foreign mission fields, and, not the least, 
to our Lutheran population in America. By peti¬ 
tion to the Consistory the enlarged Bethlehem 
church, built by Scott, became the centre of Ro- 


14 


senilis’ work in Stockholm from March 13, 1857. 
Through the Spirit-given labors of a growing 
number of witnesses, Sweden was gradually 
awakening from the era of spiritual sleep. 

In spots, living voices had been raised before 
this time,* chief of whom was that still influential 
preacher and catechist, Henrik Schartau of 
Lund, a pastor of such eminence of spirit and of 
intellect that he must be ranked among the 
greatest spiritual leaders of the Church (he died 
in 1825). Schartau represents the Wyrtemberg 
type of Pietism, with its brooding, analytical, 
patriarchal trend. He was a genius in catechi- 
zation. The Rosenius movement represents a 
brighter, less severe type, complementary of the 
other, and like it, with limitations of its own. 
But it homes itself among the common people 
readily, and understands the sacred art of re¬ 
moving hindrances to faith in the heart of men 
in every station of life. 

Soon mighty churchmen like Bishop Thoman- 
der of Lund, the brilliant Dean Wieselgren of 
Gothenburg, preachers like the learned returned 
missionary Fjellstedt, who spoke twelve lan¬ 
guages, wrote four more, and read fourteen be¬ 
sides these, in all thirty, hymnists like the layman 
Ahnfelt, the Lutheran Sankey of Sweden, singer 
and preacher of blessed gifts and graces, and an 
array of noble and God-fearing souls threw their 
energies into the awakening movement. A host 


15 


of able and fearless men and women! The move¬ 
ment was, in fact, an Inner Missions movement 
on a big scale. Dean Wieselgren was also the 
silver-tongued leader in the Temperance Reform. 
The organizing of the “Evangelical Fatherland 
foundation” in 1856, for lay-missions at home 
and foreign missions abroad, and its establish¬ 
ing of a publication house able to furnish the 
requisite devotional literature, gave the awaken¬ 
ing solid aid. Rosenius deemed lay-missionating 
necessary, the State Church being what it was 
at the time. Doctrinally he never wavered. His 
reverence for the Church suffered no sectarianiz- 
ing diminution. Luther has never had a more 
evangelical disciple in that far North than Ro¬ 
senius, the Lutheran. Pietist, without the legal¬ 
ism of extreme Pietism. Who, moreover, has 
written more tellingly and searchingly on the 
sanctified life in faith than he? And, without 
the too common speculations on the second com¬ 
ing of Christ, what beautiful setting forth of 
Christian hope we find in him! 

From i860 on, during seven years, Rosenius 
gave in “The Pietist” an exposition of Paul’s 
greatest letter—to the Romans—later published 
in two large volumes. With deep theological in¬ 
sight, exceeding attention to the sense of the text, 
and spiritual force, Rosenius has endowed the 
Christian Church with an unexcelled popular 
exposition of the “Romans.” Would that this 


16 


mighty work were found, slightly retouched, in 
an English rendering! It would find no rival 
in English. Thorough study unites here with a 
marvellous devotional unction. This is “inten¬ 
sive Bible study” after our own heart. This is 
dLcipleship with Luther’s classic exposition of 
the “Galatians.” No country possesses an ample, 
popular, and yet scholarly, exposition that can 
vie with this work of Rosenius on the “Romans.” 
With all its noted simplicity, making it a favor¬ 
ite among people in general, it has nevertheless 
been a Bible school, and even a theological course, 
for thousands of pastors, theologians, and intelli¬ 
gent Christian laymen in all ranks of life. Rose¬ 
nius has been readily comprehended by our fathers 
and mothers, even by scantily schooled minds. 
Powerful and clear spiritual experience liberates 
and matures the intellect itself. A Norwegian 
translation of Rosenius on the “Romans” is ex¬ 
tant since decades. He has also been rendered 
into German. 

Just a closing word on Rosenius’ style. 

It is winsomely warm, and Northernly placid. 
It is marked by a keen, incisive spiritual insight. 
He probes into the interior of the text with as¬ 
tounding patience. Such intense scanning of the 
inner heart and organism of the Word of God! 
But he also probes firmly, yet lovingly, into the 
human heart, which he knows so well, and 
which he examines and diagnoses like the true 


17 


spiritual physician that he is. Here is religious 
psychology (study of the soul) for the educated 
youth of the Church, psychology by the light of 
the Holy Spirit, who does know the soul. The 
work-righteousness “religious psychology” of a 
worldly wisdom, darkened in understanding, 
can, of course, not know the soul in its deep 
eternal relations. Try out this new Biblical psy t - 
chology, and see! Here the toiler of the shop, 
the maid, the parent, the Christian educator, the 
Bible student, the man and woman of affairs will 
meet one who knows them to the heart-core. 
Rosenius converses with the soul intimately, as 
if he talked to its very inwards. He is uniquely 
conversant with your troubled soul-states. He 
sets the jubilations of your faith and hope into 
words that surprisingly reveal what your deepest 
heart feels. And that most trying condition of 
the soul—spiritual uncertainty—what a Christ- 
directed analyzer of the heart, so pained, is Ro¬ 
senius ! That is, if you care to take time, prayer¬ 
fully, to know the difficulty, and the way out of 
it. Personally I believe that in dealing with 
spiritual uncertainty Rosenius has had but few 
equals in the history of the Church. His influ¬ 
ence here has been powerful. 

The sustained Biblical dignity of expression in 
his writings unites with a crystal clear simplicity 
and never-failing Christian fervor. Rosenius’ 
gift, even genius, for careful thought-develop- 


The Believer. 2 . 


18 


ment is also remarkable. There are times when 
he goes into the deeps that test the power of 
thinking. But if you read him then in your 
quiet chamber, when your soul is alone with 
God, even these passages will seem bright and 
plain. He is taught of God to minister to seek¬ 
ers as well as to finders, to the young and to the 
mature. May it be remembered, that it was the 
youth of his own time that found in him a spir- 
itual guide, and grew up with him in the Word. 

When we become intimately homed in his 
style we will discover that extremely fine and 
spiritually purposive shades of meaning are ex¬ 
pressed by him in a manner that may escape the 
inattentive reader. Yet not mistily—for it is ex¬ 
actly the Lutheran laity that has been the ardent 
circle of Rosenius-readers. This exquisite at¬ 
tention to the varied shades of Christian experi¬ 
ence and to the most intricate troubles of the 
sinner seems to find its correspondingly exquisite 
expression in a choice of thoughts and words 
spiritually true and often uncommonly beautiful. 
It is not a pedantic clarity of thought, hut intui¬ 
tional clearness, which grasps the heart of things' 
without minute analysis that bids for the painful 
scrutiny of grammatical and rhetorical scholar¬ 
ship. Rosenius spoke and wrote for the common 
Christian man. How painstaking he was in his 
effort to lead the soul aright! So in picturing 
with tireless carefulness the snares, the struggles, 


19 


the dangers of the self-righteous, or the awak¬ 
ened, or the reclaimed, Rosenius makes sure that 
his words say what they ought to say to these 
souls. We feel off and on that we might need 
his effective living voice to bring out in full 
those beautiful touches that are deftly suggested 
rather than prominently expressed. Once in a 
while the busy writer has failed to work out 
clearly a sentence—he was always extremely 
taxed with labor. Those are slips, not charac¬ 
teristics. Some of the choicest spiritual intima¬ 
tions in Rosenius come in those easy turns of 
thought, telling little phrases, tiny particles of 
speech that make translation of Rosenius a man’s 
iob. This trait in his style of writing has its 
reason above all in that exceeding carefulness 
with* which Rosenius attends to the words of 
Scripture. It comes also from his loving sensi¬ 
tiveness to the hidden troubles of the soul and to 
the complicated struggles of Christian faith and 
hope. The Church work of Rosenius was—to 
save souls! 

If we have a strong interest in our own salva¬ 
tion we will come to learn what a wondrous gift 
a good devotional writer is. Rosenius’ mastery 
in varying the expression of a spiritual reality 
or of a spiritual experience or of a truth of the 
Word makes him always fresh and informing, 
quickening and delightful. The spiritual inten¬ 
sity of his thought at times shocks the depth of 


20 


our being. So, too, the tender and amiable 
pleading with a despondent heart brings tears of 
gratitude to our eyes. He does not voice the 
spiritual experiences of heart and conscience in 
the cold terms of logic, morals, mind-life. He 
speaks in the terms of the heart-life. He gives 
the right tone-color of language as of thought 
when portraying the states of the soul. 

His theology is ample, sound, Biblical. We 
can well understand why one of American 
Lutheranism’s leading college presidents, him¬ 
self pastor, lately wrote: ”1 have learned more 
theology from Rosenius than from all my other 
theological study.” The statement comes from 
a strictly Confessional churchman. 

But our brief estimate of Rosenius must follow 
his own rule: All praise and glory to Christ 
alone! We sit at the feet of Rosenius only be¬ 
cause he is a trustworthy guide to Christ—for 
no other reason. 

First and last, how Rosenius makes Christ 
stand forth gloriously, in all the radiant mag¬ 
nificence of His redemption on Golgotha and on 
Easter! The fruits in atonement and justifica¬ 
tion by faith, with “the hope of glory”, abound 
there. He wrote once to a friend: “The blood 
of Christ is shed unto the remission of sins. Oh, 
it reads: ‘Unto the remission of sins!’ And that 
—that holds also for me. This is my only com- 


21 


fort in faith, and this shall be my religion: 
‘Unto the remission of sins!’ ” 

When Rosenius died February 24, 1868, from 
a stroke, only 52 years old, he was no longer a 
derided, intruding layman, but a revered and 
loved spiritual father to tens of thousands among 
the clergy and laity in many lands. At his 
funeral, from St. John’s Church, Stockholm, 
Bishop Beckman read the service, and then spoke 
with simple and touching force to Rev. 14. 13: 
“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from 
henceforth.” With the singing of “Hallelujah” 
by a chorus, the impressive service revealed its 
tone of triumph, befitting the finish of a con¬ 
secrated Christian pilgrimage through the vale 
of tears to the Lord of Life in heaven. 

* * * 

The translator has been variously urged to 
render into our language one of this* man’s brief 
and choice writings: First, by my pastoral ex¬ 
periences, for many years; then, in my present 
vocation, by seeing the dire needs of young can¬ 
didates for the ministry; further, as a glorious 
encouragement for the Bible Study movement 
of our land; and lastly, for my own spiritual 
refreshment and renewal of faith. Some state¬ 
ments in Rosenius might have needed slight 
elucidation. But, with the exception of a few 
cases, I have thought best to let the native man- 




22 

ner of Rosenius speak for itself in this first writ¬ 
ing of his turned into English. Most of the fre¬ 
quent underscorings of the original are retained. 

Christ bless the message of His servant Ro¬ 
senius to the Church of America! 

Adolf Hult. 

Augustana Theological Seminary, 

Epiphany, 1923. 


\ 


I. 


The Importance of the Believer’s 
Freedom from the Law 

As a preface to the meditation we are now 
undertaking, we must remind the reader that 
since we have already in an exposition of 
the Ten Commandments considered what 
God in His holy Law requires of man, the 
“handling aright the word of truth” (II Tim. 
2 . 15 ) demands that we now also consider 
what God would do for them who are 
stricken by the Law and fearful of His word. 
Deviations from the straight way of the Lord 
occur not only to the right hand but also to 
the left. As surely as they go to perdition 
who with their evangelical confession have 
not the spirit of the fear of the Lord but 
can always readily believe the grace of God 
and then live freely according to the desire 
of the flesh and of the world; or they who 
in a legalistic tone company so falsely and 
superficially with the Law that they never 
become lost and despondent through it but 
are quite satisfied with their piety and sanc¬ 
tification—as surely as these are in an un- 

23 


24 


happy way, just so surely will they also be 
lost who permit themselves to be ‘‘entangled 
again in a yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5 . 1 ), 
lose the real child confidence and finally the 
last spark of faith, are torn loose from the 
stock, and are “withered” (John 15 . 6 ). 

As stated, we have previously considered 
God’s holy Law, for the awakening of the 
secure and lighthearted and for guidance in 
righteousness. We have heard from God’s 
own mouth what is delightsome and accept¬ 
able to Him and, on the contrary, what dis¬ 
pleases and offends Him. And we can never 
in this life praise God enough for the light 
to know with full certainty what God wills, 
what is acceptable to Him. We have also 
seen the majestic earnestness of the Law of 
the Lord, the consuming fiery zeal with which 
He (in Israel) visited the transgression of 
His holy commandments — for with His 
eternal wrath and vengeance He threatens all 
them that despise Him, while, on the con¬ 
trary, He promises infinite grace to them that 
love Him and keep His commandments. Aye, 
when the work-righteous saints only look to 
a pious conduct, we have witnessed in Christ’s 
application of the Law how the eyes of the 
Lord look to the thoughts, desires, and most 
secret movements of the heart. May we now 
during all the days of our life consider this! 


25 


For the commandments and threats of God 
are no jest, but a majestic and unchangeable 
earnestness. What God at any time hated, 
He still continually hates. What God at any 
time loved, He still loves to-day, as surely as 
God can not change. Such things ought, 
indeed, to awaken every man to bethink him¬ 
self. But, alas, the Lord have mercy! Even 
Christ’s own most perfect exposition of the 
Law could not make of the Pharisees crushed 
sinners, nor rouse His disciple Judas out of 
the charm which the devil had cast about 
him. He who will can always shut his heart 
and hide himself from the light of the truth. 
Such souls will also be allowed to become 
hardened, so that the Lord says they shall 
never “understand (the truth) with their 
heart, and should turn again, and I should 
heal them” (Matt. 13.15). 

But while some take to heart nothing at all 
of God’s dreadful threatenings, others again 
become by His commandments completely 
lost in distress of sin, powerlessness and 
despondency and are consumed inwardly 
merely because they know their sin, the 
ungodliness, falsehood, and hardness of heart, 
but do not understand that all these things 
will not be reckoned to them who are in 
Christ Jesus (Rom. 8.1, 3). It always hap¬ 
pens according to the adage, “They who ought 


26 


to fear, fear not, and they who ought not to 
fear, fear.” We must, therefore, also think 
of that danger which commonly is most fine 
and mysterious, that a soul begins to look 
only upon itself, loses out of sight the whole 
covenant of grace, sinks down into a spirit 
of bondage, and ends in unbelief. 

We wish, therefore, by the grace of God, 
to treat that very important, thoughtworthy 
and comforting subject, but one also very 
unknown, misunderstood and kept in silence: 

The Believer Free from the Taw. 

The Lord God open now our eyes! The 
Lord grant us the light and guidance of His 
Spirit! 


II. 


The Meaning of This Freedom 

The apostle John says in his first epistle, 
chapter five, verse thirteen: “These things 
have I written unto you, that ye may know 
that ye have eternal life, even unto you that 
believe on the name of the Son of God.” 
From this we see that we may have come to 
faith in Jesus and nevertheless not know 
what we have in Him, not understand the 
meaning and content of the grace He has 
prepared for His believers. An enlightened 
and faithful teacher has expressed himself 
thus: “I had for years been attached to my 
Saviour before I had the least idea of that 
glorious state, that I am simply free from 
the Law, that I am no more estimated and 
judged according to the Law, but only ac¬ 
cording to the righteousness acquired for 
me by my Lord, Christ. And I can say that 
with this light there dawned in my soul a 
new gracious day of the Lord, that my in¬ 
ward man entered, by this light, into a new, 
happier period of life and peace, of holy zest 

27 




28 


and power, though to be sure it again and 
again becomes obscured and weakened, until 
the Lord afresh quickens me.” • In this con¬ 
fession all unite who have made the expe¬ 
rience mentioned. 

And nevertheless, how strangely unknown 
this doctrine is, how misunderstood, and what 
silence on this glorious point of doctrine! It 
still appears to many in one sense pious souls 
almost like a novelty, yes, perhaps a danger¬ 
ous novelty and a heresy, if we say: “There 
are men who do not at all come under the 
jurisdiction of the Law, men whom God 
never will judge according to His holy Law, 

to whom God never reckons their sins; while 

/ 

on the contrary others will be condemned, 
if they but err in a single point.” Many will 
be astounded at such words, as being a most 
singular novelty. Thus in the midst of 
Christendom it is possible for men to be 
altogether ignorant of one of the most impor¬ 
tant truths of Christianity and merely because 
of the blind reason and fancy be enemies of 
the saving light itself, and still suppose that 
they have the brightest light. 

But to prevent misunderstanding and to 
voice the meaning of the believers’ freedom 
from the Law, we will in brief express the 
same in the following manner : They who have 
been condemned and slain by the Law, so 


29 


that they have sought and found their salva¬ 
tion only in the atonement of Christ, are 
altogether free from the Law’s condition of 
salvation, or the obligation to seek their 
righteousness and salvation through observing 
the Law; and, secondly, they are also, ac¬ 
cording to their faith, free from the rule of 
the Law in the conscience, or what the 
apostle calls the “spirit of bondage . . . unto 
fear” (Rom. 8.15), and the “yoke of bondage” 
(Gal. 5.1), as well as from the agonies and 
sufferings connected therewith, since in their 
Lord and Surety they have their whole ful¬ 
filment of Law, eternal forgiveness, life and 
salvation. That the believers are free from 
the Jewish ceremonial law and police law is 
conceded by all, especially as that law even 
in the old covenant was not binding on other 
peoples than the Jews. But here it is a ques¬ 
tion of the moral Law, or the ten command¬ 
ments. And even from this Law the believers 
are free, so that they no more are held to its 
condition of salvation, will no more be judged 
according as they themselves are before the 
Law, but according to that most perfect 
righteousness which they have in Christ. 
They live therefore, under a constant grace, 
in a kingdom of grace , which at all times— 
as long as they by faith cling to Christ—is 
mighty upon them. “By so much also hath 


30 


Jesus become the surety of a better covenant’’ 
(Hebr. 7.22). Bless the Lord, O my soul, 
and all that is within me! 

This we shall now see by the words of the 
Holy Scripture itself. When, in Romans 7, 
the apostle has first set forth the example 
of the perfect freedom from the law of the 
husband, into which the woman is trans¬ 
ferred when her husband dies, so that she 
may now without sin be joined to another 
man (v. 2, 3), he adds in v. 4: “Wherefore,— 
ye also were made dead to the law through 
the body of Christ; that ye should be joined 
to another, even to him who was raised from 
the dead.” And again, v. 6: “But now we 
have been discharged from the law, having 
died to that wherein we were held; so that 
we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in 
oldness of the letter.” But if any one then 
asks about which law the apostle here speaks, 
he immediately receives enlightenment as to 
that in the following verse (v. 7), where the 
apostle expressly quotes the essence, yes, the 
very marrow out of the Law of the ten com¬ 
mandments, namely: “Thou shalt not covet,” 
which, we know, is the conclusion of the moral 
Law, the last of the ten commandments. 
There I see, then, about which Law the 
apostle speaks. It is also from the moral 
Law, or the ten commandments, alone that 


31 


we learn to “know sin” (v. 7), become “slain” 
(v. 11) and “exceeding sinful” (v. 13), etc., 
as the apostle says of the Law in this chapter. 
For from the ceremonial law the Jews 
received, on the contrary, their comfort and 
glorying, because it could be fulfilled. Ac¬ 
cordingly it is of this moral Law the apostle 
says that the believers are “freed (Am. Rev. 
V. ‘discharged’) from the Law.” But alone 
in that manner which he himself explains, 
namely, that we are free from its “curse” 
(Gal. 3.13) and from its “yoke of bondage” 
(5.1). Therefore he also expresses the 
contrary of “being under the law” by “being 
under grace,” when in Rom. 6.14 he says: 
“For ye are not under law, hut under grace.” 
When these two conditions, to be under Lazo 
and to be under grace, stand as opposites of 
one another, then I see what is meant by the 
freedom from the Law. Only as a rule and 
a light in regard to what is sin or holiness 
do the commandments of the moral Law 
retain their eternal importance and power 
even for the believers, as a loving guidance 
for their willing spirit and as chastisement 
of their evil flesh. For, as was said before, 
what God at any time loved, that He always 
loves, and what God at any time hated, that 
He always hates, as sure as His holy being 
can not be changed. Therefore we see that 


32 


the same apostle Paul, who most speaks of our 
freedom from the Law, nevertheless, when 
he admonishes the Christians, sets before 
them the commandments of the Law as a 
rule, for example, when he says: “Only use 
not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, 
but through love be servants one to another, 
For”—mark this addition—“the whole law 
is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Gal. 
5.14). There we see that he presents the 
commandments of the Law as the rule. And 
John says: “This is the love of God, that 
we keep his commandments” (I John 5.3). 
But if the believers nevertheless through the 
weakness of the flesh err, and the conscience 
then condemns and terrifies them with the 
threat of the Law and curses, then says the 
apostle: Not so, nay, “Christ redeemed us 
from the curse of the law, having become 
a curse for us.—Stand fast therefore, and 
be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage 
(Gal. 3.13; 5.1), 

Consequently the believers live under such 
a condition that they, to be sure, have an 
unchangeable rule in the commandments of 
the Law, but that they never shall be con¬ 
demned for the greater or lesser failings in 
the observation of this rule. They shall, to 
be sure, be chastened, corrected, cleansed, 


33 


and broken for their sins, first by the Law, 
then by “rod and torments”, “wherever neces¬ 
sary”, but never be judged according to the 
Law; for should they be judged according to 
the Law, then they would be condemned , 
because the judgment of the Law is a curse 
upon the least sin,—the judgment reads thus: 
“Cursed is every one who continued! not in 
all things that are written in the book of the 
law, to do them” (Gal. 3.10). Therefore 
we also see how Christ, to be sure, reproved 
and corrected His believing disciples for their 
sins, but never excluded them from grace, 
rather in the midst of His reproving spoke 
of their seats of honor in heaven (Luke 22.- 
24-30). Thus John, too, says in First Epistle, 
2 Chapter: “My little children, these things 
write I unto you that ye may not sin. And 
if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the 
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”. 

So this can explain to us the perfect free¬ 
dom from the Law. And if any one still finds 
it difficult to believe and comprehend the very 
truth of the matter, we only remind him that 
he who does not believe this great truth, has 
not yet the right conception of the forgiveness 
of sins; for it is only because of a singular 
darkness of our soul that we do not consider 
that the forgiveness of sins implies freedom 
from the Lazv. For how can sin be forgiven, 


The Believer. 3. 


34 


if we shall be judged according to the Law? 
A state of grace, a constant forgiveness must 
naturally imply that we are not under the 
judgment of the Law; for, as previously has 
been said at some time, if I in the morning 
would have all my sins forgiven and the whole- 
merit of Christ reckoned to me, but I should 
afterwards be judged according to the Law, 
then all my joy would be at an end before 
evening, all the grace which was given me 
would profit me nothing, no, not even an hour. 
For I am, indeed, at no moment so free from 
sin that the Law does not reprove and con¬ 
demn me, if I am to be judged by the Law. 
Of what use were then my pardon? What 
would then become of the everlasting song 
to the praise of the Lamb? Nay, says the 
apostle: “I do not make void the grace of 
God: for if righteousness is through the 

law, then Christ died for nought’’ (Gal. 
2.21). “He that hath the Son hath the life” 
(I John 5.12), he “cometh not into judgment” 
(John 5.24), he shall not be judged according 
to the Law. This is our perfect freedom 
from the Law. 

But this freedom from the Law also in¬ 
cludes that my conscience through faith is 
set free from the Law’s yoke of bondage and 
that I have received “not the spirit of bond¬ 
age again unto fear; but—the spirit of adop- 


35 


tion, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Rom. 
8.15). But this freedom of conscience is an 
imperfect freedom, for it is dependent on my 
faith, and my faith is never perfect. In the 
heart of God there is an eternal satisfaction 
with the merit of the Son alone, an eternal 
grace, an eternal good pleasure in what the 
only begotten Son has done; but in my heart 
there is a continual variation and strife be¬ 
tween faith and unbelief, a continual alter¬ 
nating of light and darkness. In heaven 
there is an everlasting song of praise to the 
victory of the Lamb, but here below on earth 
only brief moments of increased light, joy, 
and songs of praise. In God’s great book my 
account is forever balanced, but my little pass¬ 
book, my conscience, seldom corresponds with 
God’s account, for we have an enemy who 
continually makes new entries of debt against 
us in order to disturb and terrify us. But 
praised be God, that the covenant of grace is 
in His heart perfect, firm, and undisturbed; 
that He does not count our sins against us; 
and that He does not judge us according to 
the Law, although we ourselves do so. 


III. 


Who Enjoy This Freedom? 

We have now in brief indicated the nature 
of the believers’ freedom from the Law; we 
have at the same time also cited some Scrip¬ 
ture passages which confirm the fact itself, and 
we shall soon cite others. But before we 
further develop the subject itself, the free¬ 
dom from the Law, we will first somewhat 
more closely consider the persons who enjoy 
this precious privilege. It does not belong to 
any and every one. The Scriptures speak ex¬ 
pressly concerning those to whom the reward 
is not reckoned as of grace, but as of debt 
'(Rom. 4.4), who receive merely what they 
have earned (Matt. 20.14), who are under 
the law” (Rom. 3.19) and therefore also 
“are under a curse” (Gal. 3.10). May no 
one deceive himself and appropriate what does 
not belong to him. May each one earnestly 
give heed to the very words of Scripture. 

The apostle says expressly in Gal. 2.19: 
“I through the law died unto the law.” 
Such words contain the secret of our question. 

36 


37 


He said the same in Rom. 7.4: “Wherefore, 
my brethren, ye also were made dead to the 
law”; and again, v. 6: “having died to that 
wherein we were held.” 

Mark the words “made dead” and “died”. 
And in the same chapter the apostle shows 
how it takes place and what it means to be 
made dead unto the Law through the Law. 
He says: “I had not known sin, except 
through the law: for I had not known covet¬ 
ing, except the law had said, Thou shalt not 
covet: but sin, finding occasion, wrought in 
me through the commandment all manner of 
coveting: for apart from the law sin is dead. 
And I was alive apart from the law once: 
but when the commandment came, sin revived, 
and I died.—For sin, finding occasion, through 
the commandment beguiled me, and through 
it slew me” (Rom. 7.7-9,11). What do such 
words signify? I died, through the law.” 
Sin “slew me through it?” If you go to the 
bottom of the question, you will find a pre¬ 
cious light. Which death does the apostle 
mean when he in this connection says: “and 
I died ?”—“died through the law”. The 
catechism tells of three kinds of death: bodily, 
spiritual, and eternal; but here yet a fourth 
death is spoken of: for the apostle was, in¬ 
deed, spiritually dead even before the com¬ 
mandment came. What does he then here 


38 


mean by the word “dead” ? The experienced 
know it; others do not believe it. Ah, that 
is what happens when the Law strikes home, 
when the holy eyes of God begin to pursue 
man’s thoughts and the intents of the heart 
then is man made dead. And the more ear¬ 
nestly he is attacked the sooner will he be 
made dead. It was the old Pharisee Saul 
who was made dead before there could be 
a Paul. The sinew of Jacob’s thigh had to be 
strained in a wrestling one night with the 
Unknown One, before he could say: ‘ I have 
seen God face to face, and my life is pre¬ 
served” (Gen. 32.30) ; and then he received 
a new name. After that he never walked 
erect. Briefly, take the apostle’s words as 
they read, and you will notice who is made 
dead. He says: ‘7 was made dead.” -It was 
his I, his self-active, self-righteous, self-holy 
I that fell in the battle with sin under the 
law. The Law egged on the strife by inces¬ 
sant urging, by demands and remarks; and 
the deep-seated confidence in our own 
strength, which constitutes the soul of the old 
man, gave support to a sinewy hope of suc¬ 
cess in the strife. But all contributed the 
more to exhaust and slay him. He expresses 
all of this thus: Sin “through the command¬ 
ment beguiled me, and through it slew me.” 
Now it is broken—the old notion of our own 


39 


power, and of the Law’s ability to make man 
pious and holy; and then man lies there lost, 
helpless, impotent, yes, “dead”. But when 
now “the body of Christ”, which was given 
for the forgiveness of sins, is presented 
through the gospel to the despairing one— 
when God’s eternal counsel of atonement, 
Christ in His active and suffering merit, is 
explained to the exhausted soul, which now 
despairs of all its own work, both of its will, 
and ability, its prayer, its penitence, yes, all 
that is in it; 

“It draweth near, a cripple, lame, 

To Him whose love can mercy render. 
Unworthy of His grace, so tender, 

It would sink down for very shame.” 

Then it sinks into the bosom of the Bride¬ 
groom, the second husband, that it shall “be 
joined to another, even to him who was raised 
from the dead” (Rom. 7.4). And lo! then 
the soul all at once receives the whole fulfil¬ 
ment of the Law in Him who was “the end 
of the law unto righteousness to ‘every one 
that believeth” (Rom. 10.4). And now the 
bride lives only upon His righteousness and 
upon His provision for everything, and says: 

“I sat down under his shadow with great 
delight—And his banner over me was 
love” (Song of Sol. 2.3, 4). 


40 


Lo, such a soul is now freed from the Law, 
as the apostle expressly declares: “So that 
the law is become our tutor to bring us unto 
Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 
But now that faith is come, we are no longer 
under a tutor” (Gal. 3.25). Indeed, the old 
notion of our own strength will still grow 
forth a thousand times, commonly under the 
more subtle form, that through prayer and 
the power of God I can, and ought to do so 
much and so much—and it betrays itself as 
a notion of Adam by this, that I, I, I, not 
Christ, become the centre of all my thoughts. 
But then, indeed, I again become exhausted, 
and am made dead until I again must sink 
down at the feet of my Saviour and let Him 
become my all. And as long as this condi¬ 
tion continues—that I am constantly and 
anew led back to Christ—I am, however, not 
under the Law, but under grace. 

From this you can also understand who are 
not under grace, but under Law, namely they 
who have not been made dead through the 
Law, as we have now seen, but still retain 
their hope, their confidence in the Law, in 
their labor, their prayer, and have not be¬ 
come so lost and despairing of their labor 
that they must needs surrender—surrender 
as lost, to sue for mercy,—but they still by 
purpose and intention strive for victory 


41 


through their own labor. If during this they 
be rather despondent as to themselves, they 
may be quite nigh to the Kingdom of God. 
It is only necessary that they mistrust their 
own efforts, and then for a moment catch a 
glimpse of Jesus “white and ruddy” (Song 
of Sol. 5.10)—that is, that in a blessed hour 
He is transfigured before them. But if with 
this labor there still follows much comfort 
and self-satisfaction, and their faith and con¬ 
fession of Christ is merely a part of their own 
righteousness, and if their faith is not the 
actual refuge of a distressed and lost sinner, 
but a new, more beautiful piece of cloth on 
the old garment, then they are farther from 
the true grace. These can make a rather 
proper confession, but they simply lack the 
reality, which can be proved by various signs 
of the inner state, and this they certainly 
ought to take into serious consideration, if so 
be that they yet can be awakened. These 
signs are especially the following: First, 
they do not recognize what the apostle says 
concerning the true effect of the Law, that he 
became “exceeding sinful through the com¬ 
mandment,” that he “was made dead”; for, 
on the contrary, they deem that they have be¬ 
come quite good and pious. Therefore, too, 
their song is not the Lamb that was slain, but 
their own piety, their own holiness, or how 


42 


they ought to be and how they ought to live, 
in brief, something about themselves. This 
shows that they have not been put to shame 
in this and have not found their only glorying 
in Christ. 

The second sign is that they cannot com¬ 
prehend that we must be freed from the Law, 
in order to he saved and holy. At least they 
can not understand what the apostle means 
when he says: “For I through the law 
died unto the law, that I might live unto 
God” (Gal. 2.19); and again: “Wherefore, 
my brethren, ye also were made dead to the 
law—that we might bring forth fruit unto 
God” (Rom. 7.4). Mark, that one should 
not be able to “live unto God” without being 
made dead unto the Law, this is to them some¬ 
thing so foolish and strange that, if it had 
not been an apostle’s word, they would have 
proclaimed it as the worst heresy in the 
world. It must be just the opposite, they 
think, that if we are to bring forth fruit 
unto God, the conscience must be well bound 
by the Law; and that if the consciences of 
men are loosed from the Law, this must be 
an opening of the widest portals to all un¬ 
godliness. This is the sign, which betrays 
even those who otherwise very closely re¬ 
semble the Christians. We ask: Is not this 
the most universal experience, asserting itself 


43 


throughout all mankind, that every man is 
inclined to judge everything according to his 
ozvn experiencet When a man, then, is of 
such a mind as to regard a free evangelical 
preaching, for example on the Christian’s 
freedom from the Law, as harmful—does not 
this prove that he himself has this experience: 
that it is only the Law, and its threats, which 
keep him from sin? But this again proves, 
of course, that he himself is still ruled only by 
the Law, that he is not “made dead to the 
law,” that he has not yet lived to make the 
blessed experience that the more free grace 
quickens the heart, the more the desire in¬ 
creases for that which is holy and good. For 
if he himself has this experience, he will 
of course, be inclined to think that the same 
gospel, which so mightily enlivens him for 
the good, will also have the same effect on 
others. For every man, to be sure, is inclined 
to judge all matters according to his own ex¬ 
perience. 

A third sign is this that they never know 
any difference between a pious man and a 
Christian . If some one only loves the Word 
of God, is “devout” and God-fearing (Acts 
10.2), and leads a proper life, they immediate¬ 
ly consider him a Christian. They do not 
question whether he is pious by natural, or 
legalistic, motive, or whether he also was 


44 


made dead unto the Law and lives by Christ. 
Further, they well understand the danger that 
souls are frivolous and receive the grace of 
God in vain (II Cor. 6.1). But that any one 
is kept pious merely through legalistic preach¬ 
ing, through warnings and admonishings, and 
consequently lacks that which is distinctive of 
a Christian—that the love of Christ constrains 
him, and he, as Paul says, “lives unto God” 
just because he is freed from the Law—mark, 
that a soul lacks this essential of a Christian, 
and lives piously merely from a legalistic mo¬ 
tive—as to this danger they are never con¬ 
cerned. When all experience testifies what the 
apostle also expressly says that all men, even 
the heathen, have the Law written in their 
heart, and its demands accordingly cannot con¬ 
stitute any great mystery; when, on the con¬ 
trary, a piety of legalistic motive is so subtle a 
fraud “as to lead astray, if possible, even the 
elect” (Matt. 24.24), so that even Christ de¬ 
clared that on the Day of Judgment He will 
cast into the outer darkness members of the 
marriage-feast of His kingdom, who have pro¬ 
phesied by His name, cast out demons, and 
done many mighty works (Matt. 22.11 ; 7.22), 
—then there certainly are reasons for fearing 
this most mysterious evil just as much as that 
which all men can understand, namely, sins 
against the Law. But when a man is unable 


45 


to consider this, but always looks only for 
Law and deeds, that certainly proves that he 
has not experienced—and therefore does not 
know—the difference between a pious man 
and a Christian. But this difference one learns 
to understand well when one through the Lazv 
is made dead unto the Lazv. Thus this sign, 
too, proves that a man is not freed from the 
Law. 



IV. 

Why Freedom from the Law Is 
Necessary 

Having now seen the most essential differ¬ 
ence between those who are under the Law 
and those who are under grace, we will also 
examine why it is so necessary to be freed 
from the Law. Freedom from the Law is 
altogether necessary. For without it no flesh 
can be justified in the sight of God or abide 
in His grace; neither can the soul which is 
awake retain the confidence of faith. The 
reason is that our whole nature is by the Fall 
so utterly ruined, so filled with sin and the 
seed of the serpent that there has never on 
earth existed, nor does there now exist, any 
saint that is not every hour guilty before the 
holy Law of God. To them who sleep and 
dream in their piety, this is a hard and foolish 
saying. But faithful and watchful souls feel 
it so deeply and bitterly that even having all 
the gospel of God they are often ready to de¬ 
spair entirely or to grow weary or to faint by 
the way. Either we shall be so completely 

46 


47 


saved by grace alone that God never reckons 
with us, never thinks of His claims, or we 
are eternally lost. So constantly filled with 
sin is our whole life. In the degree that the 
spirit is willing, holy, and awake, in that same 
degree we feel the corruption powerfully and 
urgently. The knowledge of sin depends only 
on how much God means to a man. If he has 
a real, true and holy God to face, then he may 
be consumed, as the example of all saints 
proves. Or is there a single Christian so holy 
and earnest, that he fulfills for one single 
hour the demands of the first and chief‘com¬ 
mandment? We ask them who are most 
earnest and have most of the Spirit of God, 
and of power. But what is all piety, if you 
do not keep the first and chief commandment? 
That commandment demands that you shall 
love the Lord your God with all your heart, 
and with all your soul, and with all your 
strength and with all your mind (Mark 12.30) ; 
and further, that you so completely trust 
in Him alone and fear Him alone as His 
Divine faithfulness and power deserve. Is 
it not true that if you so love God of all your 
heart and trust in Him alone, that God alone 
is the sole object of your love, your trust, and 
fear, then your soul must be in an eternal 
tranquillity, in the undisturbed enjoyment of 
this sole good which you desire—the im- 


48 


I 


mortal God (I Tim. 1.17) ? Then you must 
believe that not a hair shall fall from your 
head without the will of your Father, that not 
the least thing can happen to you, not a word, 
not a look wound you, without the will of 
your Father. When you then love nothing 
but Him and His good pleasure, it must needs 
follow that you are at all times calm and 
happy, whatever may betide you, just because 
you know that all comes from your God, and 
that you love nothing else but His good plea¬ 
sure. Where is that holy man who keeps 
this commandment? We wish to speak now 
with such a one. Are you just as calm and 
happy as before if some one deprives you of 
the dearest thing you have on earth?—just 
as calm and happy, if some one takes from 
you all your property, and you are brought 
to poverty and want?—just as calm and 
happy, if some one deprives you of your good 
name and reputation, if you become disgraced, 
despised and abhorred of all men for the rest 
of your life?—just as calm and happy, if a 
severe illness, yes, if a murderer shortens your 
life? If it is true that you love God with 
all your heart, with all your mind, with all 
the powers which are in you, and, trusting 
Him alone, believe that nothing happens to 
you without His will, then you must neces¬ 
sarily be perfectly calm and happy amid all 


49 


these happenings. But perhaps it is far 
otherwise, perhaps, on the contrary, you be¬ 
come troubled by a rather trifling loss, per¬ 
haps if you but learn that men have spoken 
ill of you or exposed some weakness of 
yours this disturbs your calm for hours and 
days at a time. Yes, perhaps even a dis¬ 
dainful look troubles you. How do you, then, 
love God alone and His good pleasure? Do 
you feel that you right fervently love your 
God, so that your thoughts are continually 
with Him? Perhaps, on the contrary, you 
more ardently love and think of some human 
being? But further: Is it not true that we, 
who are redeemed with the blood of the Son 
of God from all our sins, from death and 
the power of the devil, should not have any 
higher purpose in life than to glorify Him 
who died and rose for us? Is this at all 
times actually your endeavor? Is it not true 
that if you love God with all your heart, you 
should never feel so delighted with anything 
as with your God, in prayer and intimate 
conversation with Him? Will you say that 
you constantly wish to commune with Him in 
prayer? Perhaps, far from being so, you 
prefer to attend to the various duties of your 
home rather than to commune with God in 
prayer ? Alas! what is then your relation to 
the first and chief commandment? 


The Believer. 4. 


50 


Then you should also love your neighbor as 
yourself. Always think seriously of the 
chief commandments of the Lord your God. 
What is all piety, if we do not above all keep 
the most important commandments? Is it 
actually true that you are just as careful about 
your neighbor’s welfare as about your own? 
Consider that the word “neighbor” means not 
merely some friend or other, but all men, 
friends or foes. Are you just as concerned 
about every man’s gain as about your own? 
just as sensitive to a disparaging word about 
your neighbor as when you hear that they 
speak ill of you? Further, you believe that 
every one that dies unconverted will be 
eternally damned. If you love your neighbor 
as yourself, you will work for every man’s 
conversion with as much diligence and eager¬ 
ness as if it were a question of your own 
salvation or condemnation. You take pains 
with a few, but perhaps you daily see many 
unconverted souls for whose awakening you 
have not the slightest concern. What, then, 
of your love for your neighbor? And how 
about the observance of all the other com¬ 
mandments? Is it not true that at the 
slightest occasion many unholy things within 
your heart are stirred, which the Lord God 
hates and condemns—either anger, envy, hate, 
or pride and conceit, or unclean lusts, or de- 



51 


sire for the property of others, and so forth? 
And as yet we are speaking - of the believers 
of Christ, who are watchful and realize their 
sin. There are none who so lament their 
sins as the saints. What would then happen, 
if God should judge us according to His Law? 
Must not the saints pray: “Enter not into 
judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight no 
man living is righteous ?” (Ps. 143.2). Thus 
Scripture testifies: “Behold, He putteth no 
trust in his holy ones” (Job 15.15). “What 
is man, that he should be clean ? And he that 
is born of a woman, that he should be right¬ 
eous ?—\ ea, the heavens are not clean in his 
sight: how much less one that is abominable 
and corrupt, a man that drinketh iniquity like 
water” (Job 15.14-16). And again Scripture 
says: “There is none righteous, no, not one. 
—They have all turned aside, they are together 
become unprofitable; there is none that doeth 
good, no, not so much as one” (Rom. 3.10, 
12). Every saint needs daily forgiveness of 
sins. How, then, would we fare, if we still 
had to be judged according to the Law? 


V. 


Freedom and Remaining in Grace 

It is quite important to know well by the 
Word and to believe the deep fall of man and 
the total depravity of human nature every¬ 
where, even in its remnants among the saints, 
not only in order that we may carefully value, 
take to heart, and extol the inexpressible 
grace, that we are freed from the judgments 
of the Law, but also in order that the con¬ 
science may be able to abide in this freedom. 
For if we are not by the Word well informed 
of this corruption, we shall, with all our 
knowledge of the merit of Christ, yet be 
completely buried in misery and despair, as 
soon as we have come to a real experience of 
it in ourselves. If I, who believe in Christ, 
find in myself a miserable sinfulness which 
I deem to be found only in unbelievers and 
never in the children of God, then all the 
merit of Christ will not help me; for then I 
am told: “Thou hast neither part nor lot 
in this matter: for thy heart is not right 
before God (Acts 8.21). Therefore we need 

52 


53 


to consider this matter somewhat mop 
closely. 

We saw the testimony of Scripture that 
even among God's saints there is none 
blameless, that there exists none righteous (in 
his own person), no, not one. But then a 
simple-hearted believing soul who is com¬ 
monly assailed by all contradictions of his 
own heart and of Satan will be likely to think: 
“Yes, to be sure no one is blameless, no one 
is righteous in the eyes of God, in whose 
sight the heavens are not clean (Job 15), the 
eyes of God, which see that which is as 
nothing. But surely the true saints cannot 
have and feel actual sin in their hearts, for 
example, sinful lusts and desires, indifference 
and mistrust of God, proud thoughts, and the 
like; for sanctification, the work of the Holy 
Spirit, and the very name saints must have 
some meaning. When I now feel in me that 
which is actual sin, and when it even breaks 
out in words and deeds, I can not possibly 
have any part or lot in Christ and His merit.” 
And in this way it happens—merely through 
a misconception of the holiness of the saints 
and through ignorance of man’s universal 
corruption—that they who really feel their 
sin walk none the less, in spite of all the 
gospel they hear, in a secret self-condemna¬ 
tion and lack the faith and assurance which 


54 


« 


would give them love, life, zest, and power 
unto good; and only they comfort themselves 
who are enough asleep not to notice in them¬ 
selves any sin. It is because of this thought- 
. confusion that it becomes necessary for us 
to consider those passages in Scripture which 
show us by living examples what is meant 
when we read; “He putteth no trust in his 
holy ones” (Job 15.15). 

To be sure it is true that sanctification and 
the work of the Holy Spirit also have im¬ 
portance. They who have such a faith as 
works no sanctification are not true Chris¬ 
tians. “If any man hath not the Spirit of 
Christ, he is none of his” (Rom. 8.9). But 
your misconception is due to this that you 
do not consider that there are in the saints 
two natures, the old and the nezu man, the 
flesh and the spirit. That within us which is 
born after the Spirit is spirit, but that which 
is born after the flesh is flesh and retains its 
Adamitic character as long as any of it re¬ 
mains, that is, as long as we live here on earth. 
The Spirit and the new mind, which is born 
of God—this is in truth holy among all the 
children of God. Listen to their unspeakable 
sighs, at the sense of anything sinful; hear 
them in their private, quiet prayer; see their 
tears before their God over their sins against 
Him; and you will surely understand that 


55 


flesh and blood cannot work such things, but 
that the Holy Spirit dwells in them. See 
their amazement merely at a conceited 
thought; behold their wailing and lamenting 
when a strong temptation besets and stub¬ 
bornly pursues them; mark how they sweat, 
writhe, are in anguish, yes, groan by reason 
of the disquietness of their heart; and you 
will understand that it surely is a holy spirit 
which suffers so from the unholy. View 
their joy when they have been delivered from 
a severe and persistent temptation; see their 
joy when they have received grace to be more 
spiritual and holy in heart, thoughts, and 
manner of life. View, then, the all-conquer¬ 
ing power, which is mighty in all their weak¬ 
ness, for example when a child turned to God 
can go with a bleeding heart away from the 
parental home rather than deny its Saviour; 
when a person who is most sensitive to the 
opinion of the world can forsake the whole 
world and for the rest of his life became a 
fool for Christ’s sake; when a Christian wife, 
to be well-pleasing to God, can patiently and 
humbly endure the tyranny of a godless hus¬ 
band through all the years of her life, and so 
forth. But we say again: Note the mind, 
the spirit; for all externals can deceive. Note 
the Psalms of David, where you may look 
right into his heart, see his spirit, and see, 


56 


if he is not holy. Look at the tears of Peter, 
whether he was the man to deny his Master. 
And Paul! Indeed, he was five times 
scourged, thrice beaten with rods, once 
stoned, and so forth (II Cor. 11), and at all 
these experiences he was never heard impa¬ 
tiently to wish for deliverance^ But once this 
lamentation breaks forth from his heart: 
“Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver 
me out of the body of this death?”(Rom. 
7.24) and that was when he spoke of the 
“law of sin which is in my members,—war¬ 
ring against the law of my mind” (7.23). 
Lo, such things testify that the Holy Spirit 
dwells within the saints. 

But were they therefore free from sin, did 
they therefore not have the old Adamitic 
corruption still in their flesh ? What does the 
holy apostle say?* “They that are of Christ 
Jesus crucify (Am. Rev. Vers., have cruci¬ 
fied) the flesh with the passions and the lusts 
thereof” (Gal. 5.24). Mark, he says that 
“they that are of Christ” still have remaining 
such “passions and lusts” as must be crucified. 
He speaks there, indeed, of the true saints, 
not of them who are under the Law, but of 
them “that are of Christ,” and nevertheless 


*Rosenius uses here an older Version. Yet the truth 
he develops is evident from passages like Col. 3.5. 



57 


he says that they have evil “passions and 
lusts.” But they crucify them—the Holy 
Spirit who dwells in them does that. If you 
ever have felt what evil “passions and lusts” 
signify, we ask: Are not even these sin? 
Are not just these passions and lusts the most 
hateful sins, which compel you to say to 
yourself: “Woe to me, wretch! I have sin 
in the heart itself, I love sin!” For so we 
come to know passions and lusts, namely as 
a love for sin. According to the new, holy 
spirit I hate and condemn these passions, 
this love of the flesh for sin, but I must, 
however, feel it within me. But imagine now 
a true saint, who “is of Christ Jesus.” Can 
you think of such a one as having evil pas¬ 
sions and lusts? No, that is impossible, you 
think. But here you see that the apostle 
says quite otherwise. 

It is this condition which explains why the 
same man who obtained the beautiful testi¬ 
mony that he was a man after the heart of 
God (I Sam. 13.14) could yield so terribly 
to evil passions and lusts that if the grace of 
God had not sought and saved him he would 
have been eternally lost (II Sam. 12). Of 
another man we have God’s own testimony 
that “there is none like him in the earth, a 
perfect and upright man, one that feareth 
God, and turneth away from evil” (Job 1.8) ; 


58 


but when the temptation became all too strong 
this man fell into such sore impatience that 
with many dreadful words he cursed the day 
wherein he was born and the tenderness with 
which he was nursed (Job 3). He whom 
God himself calls “perfect and upright” and 
God-fearing must, of course, truly be so, 
but he was not on that account free from the 
weakness of the flesh. Abraham, who is 
called the father of the faithful and with 
whom God spoke as a friend unto a friend, 
certainly was a greater saint than any one of 
us; but he could not so perfectly love God 
alone and trust only in Him that he was not 
also careful about his own life, and himself 
sought to save it when he said of his wife that 
she was his sister (Gen. Chapters 12 and 20). 

What are we, then, to learn of such exam¬ 
ples? By no means that every one is a Chris¬ 
tian who has sin in common with the saints. 

V. 

For only he is a Christian who in penitence 
and faith is like the saints. And as a founda¬ 
tion for our faith and pardon something quite 
different from the frailties of the saints is 
required; as a comfort against the guilt of 
sin and judgment nothing less than the 
precious merit of Christ is of any avail. Still 
less are we to infer that sin is not dangerous, 
since it is found even in the saints; no, this 
is a comfort which the false spirits, indeed, 


59 


take, who misuse all the Word of God unto 
their own destruction (II Pet. 3.16). And 
yet all the Word of God must be considered. 
But the believers have a spirit which, even 
in spite of the fall of the saints, all the more 
warns them against unwatchfulness, security, 
and haughtiness to which every fall is due. 
And it was this which the Holy Spirit wished 
to teach us, when He caused the sins of the 
saints to be recorded and when he said that 
“every Scripture inspired of God is also profit- 
*able” (II Tim. 3.16)—this, namely, that we 
are never to believe that any man walking this 
earth is free from the seed of the serpent, from 
sins and failings. From this we are to learn 
humility and the fear of God and to put all 
our trust in God’s grace alone, we are also 
to learn not to allow ourselves to be deprived 
of our comfort in Christ because of our be¬ 
setting infirmities as long as we are conscious 
that it is because of them that we dwell at 
the mercy-seat. 

It is not without reason that we employ 
so many words to show that among the saints 
of God no one is blameless. It is a fearful 
solicitation of the devil with which we have 
to contend. The devil knows so well how to 
capture souls. Just as he led Christ from the 
scantiness of the wilderness, where He “was 
with the wild beasts” (Mark 1.13), up to the 


# 


60 


pinnacles of the temple in the holy city, so, 
too, he would always lead souls spiritually. 
When we can no longer be kept sleeping with 
the world in the uncleanness of sin, he faces 
about and would lead us to such dreams of 
holiness as are yet more distant from the 
kingdom of God than the greatest unclean¬ 
ness of sin (Matt. 21.31). It has happened 
to many a Christian that before he was aware 
he had been led on so far into this deceit of 
Satan as to consider himself altogether sin¬ 
less. And when he is reminded that not even 
the aforementioned saints of the Scriptures 
were sinless, he answers: “Yes, in the Old 
Testament the Spirit was not yet given; but 
look at the apostles after Pentecost”—and 
then he imagines he is, or will be, like these. 
How can such a one need daily forgiveness? 
How can he value Christ’s everlasting priest¬ 
hood and defence, value our freedom from 
the Law?—If it please God to bless a word 
to such a soul, we wish still to speak some¬ 
what of this. 

When John says, that “the Spirit was not 
yet given” (John 7.39), he has in mind only 
those wonderful powers of Spirit which were 
poured out on the apostles after the resurrec¬ 
tion of Christ and the great day of Pentecost; 
but that the saints in the Old Testament had 
the Spirit of God, as well as those of the New, 




61 


the Scriptures certainly everywhere testify. 
It is precisely of the Old Testament saints 
the apostle Peter says: “For no prophecy 
ever came by the will of man: but men spake 
from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit 
(IP Pet. 1.21). And you say: “Look at the 
apostles at Pentecost,” and mean that we 
should be like them. Yes, if God wished to 
work a like miracle in us, it surely would be 
an easy thing for Him and for us a heavenly 
joy; but it can happen only as a miracle 
wrought in us by God. For the apostles 
could not of themselves take unto themselves 
even the least power; but received all their 
glorious powers through a miracle from 
heaven. And so it must always come about. 
But the apostle gives us a wholesome warning, 
which reads: “For I say, through the grace 
that was given me, to every man that is 
among you, not to think of himself more 
highly than he ought to think; but so to think 
as to think soberly, according as God hath 
dealt to each man a measure of faith” ( Rom. 
12.3). Do you understand this word: “Ac¬ 
cording as God hath dealt to each man a 
measure of faith?” Where there is found 
but the frailest spirit, born of the Spirit, it 
always hungers, sighs, craves, and begs for 
more than it receives of faith, love, and all 
the powers of grace; for here on earth we 




62 


shall never be fully satisfied with our portion. 
And as long as such a hungering, beseeching 
spirit is found in my heart, it likely after¬ 
wards depends on God’s imparting, how great 
a measure of faith and of powers of grace 
I have. 

But is it not a fearsome conceit to imagine 
that you can attain to the same measure of 
holiness as the apostles? Remind yourself of 
the description of that which God did with 
them. When the Holy Spirit’s tongues of 
fire, with a sound from heaven as of the rush¬ 
ing of a mighty wind, had sat down upon 
each one of them, they were so filled with the 
Holy Spirit that they thereby alone could 
immediately speak with other tongues (Acts 
2.4) ; that Peter could now raise up the dead 
(9.39-41), and merely by a word heal the 
sick (3.6; 9.34) ; yes, if only his shadow fell 
on the sick they became whole (5.15). What 
had now happened to the apostles ? They had 
received the apostolic equipment; they had 
before been but as other friends and disciples 
of Jesus, with many imperfections and fail¬ 
ings, both in understanding and power. But 
now they were quite different men; now they 
were furnished with such a measure of the 
Spirit that everything which they spoke and 
wrote must be “accepted not as the word of 
men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God * 


63 


(I Th. 2.13), so that no other human being’s 
speech or writing after the time of the apos¬ 
tles dare be compared with theirs. This 
every one knows. But why can no other holy 
man’s word be compared with that of the 
apostles? Simply for this reason that no one 
has received the same outpouring of the 
Spirit upon himself as they; for who can now, 
simply through the Spirit, speak with other 
tongues? Who has now the shadow (Acts 
5.15) which heals the sick? Who raises now 
the dead? But if the apostles had such a 
measure of Spirit that the speech or writing 
of no one can compare with theirs, neither 
may any one’s holiness in heart, thoughts, and 
walk be compared with theirs. For the 
same measure of Spirit which led their 
tongue and pen must, of course, first lead 
their thought and heart; and thereupon, 
naturally, the walk always follows. There¬ 
fore it is certainly a blind conceit to compare 
oneself with the holy apostles. 

Consider now how strangely instructive it 
is that although the apostles had received such 
an incomparable measure of the Spirit’s 
power and were more holy than any one else, 
they were, nevertheless, not entirely delivered 
from sinful corruption. We do not wish to 
determine how much of sin there lay in the 
“contention” between Paul and Barnabas 


64 


(Acts 15.39), or in the “dissimulation” of 
Peter because of which Paul “resisted him 
to the face,” according to Galatians 2.11-14. 
But one event is very remarkable—that of 
which Paul speaks in II Cor. 12.1-10. First 
he relates his glorious experience, how that 
he “was caught up even to the third heaven,” 
concerning which he twice remarks, “whether 
in the body, or apart from the body, I know 
not; God knoweth.” Then he adds that he 
“was caught up into Paradise, and heard un¬ 
speakable words, which it is not lawful for 
a man to utter.” Is it not strange that there 
is now to follow (verse 7) such a confession 
as this: “And by reason of the exceeding 
greatness of the revelations, that I should not 
be exalted overmuch, there was given to me 
a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to 
buffet me, that I should not be exalted over¬ 
much Oh, this passage shows me how the 
saints are! I, indeed, should think that after 
such a glorious experience, which he calls to 
be “caught up even to the third heaven,” and 
“into Paradise,” the holy apostle would not be 
subject to anything so abhorrent as the incli¬ 
nation to “be exalted overmuch When he 
had just come from such a holy world, such 
a pure air, if we may say so, and, besides, had 
himself done nothing splendid, but had only 
experienced marvellous grace from God, we 


65 


should think that such a holy man could not 
even be tempted to exalt himself overmuch. 
But we read in the text his own confession: 
“That I should not be exalted overmuch.” 
Ah, such are the saints! May no one, then, 
imagine himself to be more holy than the 
apostles. Bearn from this never to believe 
those who imagine that there can be such a 
holiness on earth that sin—black, unholy sin 
—no longer dwells in them. To believe any 
such thing of a human being on earth, says 
Luther, “is a thought as contrary to the nature 
of the case, as strange and erroneous as it 
would be furiously thought and spoken, if 
any one said that our Lord God had fallen 
into sin.” No, “if we say that we have no sin, 
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in 
us.—He putteth no trust in his holy ones” 
(I John 1.8; Job 15.15). 

Before the Fall man was pure and sinless. 
Then he had a free will, then he could keep 
the Law of God perfectly and thereby in his 
own person please God; for the entire nature 
of the first man was a living Law, which in 
all parts corresponded with the holy being of 
God—man was created in His image —and in 
such a condition he could fulfill all the de¬ 
mands of God. But after the Fall this entire 
nature and ability are lost. God’s image was 
destroyed, and in its place the serpent 


The Beliei'er. 5 . 


66 


implanted his image, his poison, his evil nature 
in man. From this comes the circumstance, 
corroborated by the whole Scripture and all 
experience, that the more the light and power 
of the Spirit dwells in a man, the more he 
feels the severe struggle between the Spirit 
and the flesh. But this struggle itself is con- 
demnable before the Law of God which 
demands purity and holiness in our whole 
being. This inner evil itself, these sinful 
thoughts, feelings and desires are in the eyes 
of God a sinful state, which is forbidden and 
condemned in His whole Law. This is the 
reason why no saint can possess His grace a 
single day, if he is to be judged by the Law. 
And with this we have, then, shown the first 
reason why it is altogether necessary that we 
must be freed from the Law, if we are to be 
saved. For the most upright Christians, in 
whom the love and fear of God dwell most 
powerfully, are nevertheless as to their flesh 
constantly unclean and will at certain times 
feel this corruption so mightily that they are 
near to complete despair. They feel an in¬ 
difference toward God, an unbelief, security, 
and hardness, which are fearful; no life in 
their prayer, no taste for the Word and no 
power from it, no holy zeal for the glory of 
God, neither any universal love of the 
neighbor—nothing but deadness and impo- 


67 


tence in everything. Then, too, there stir 
within their hearts many unworthy things, 
such as impatience, wrath, envy, impure de¬ 
sires, selfishness, pride, and so forth. How 
could they with all this misery of sin be God’s 
beloved children and heirs, if they were to be 
tested and judged according to the Law? And 
how would they be able to have a true peace 
of heart before their God and certainty as to 
His good pleasure and friendship, if they had 
the conviction that He would judge them ac¬ 
cording to His Law? See, then, how very 
necessary it is to be freed from the Law, if 
we are to be saved—and if we are to have 
peace with God in our hearts! 


VI. 


Freedom and True Holiness 

But the freedom of the conscience from the 
Law is also necessary for true sanctification, 
and that we might be able to do deeds truly 
good and pleasing to God. Oh, that God 
would open the hearts of many to this truth, 
which is such foolishness to the blind reason! 
The apostle says expressly: “Wherefore, 
my brethren, ye also were made dead to the 
law . . . that ye might bring forth fruit unto 
God” (Rom. 7.4). And again: “But now 
we have been discharged from the law, 
having died to that wherein we were held; so 
that we serve in newness of the spirit, and 
not in the oldness of the letter” (v. 6). And 
in the same way the apostle speaks in Gal. 
2.19: “For I through the law died unto the 
law, that I might live unto God." Note, 
however, that the apostle hereby expressly 
declares that we cannot live unto God, can¬ 
not bring forth fruit unto God, unless we first 
are dead unto the Law. Consider here but two 
circumstances. First that which is taught by 

68 


experience: As long as a soul is not deliv¬ 
ered from the spirit of thraldom, but labors 
at his piety with his eye on himself and on 
the Law and looks upon God as One who 
demands something of him, then all is dead, 
heavy, and listless in the heart, and with all 
resolutions there comes no power, no accom¬ 
plishment, nothing but thoughts and words 
and a few outward observances, which are not 
too difficult for the natural self. Further, if 
the Law also attacks the heart and the inner 
corruption, this becomes doubly stirred up 
and irritated as the apostle says: “When the 
•commandment came, sin revived,” and 
“wrought in me ... all manner of coveting,” 
and so forth (Rom. 7.7-11). Oh, how many 
anguished bondservants sigh under this ex¬ 
perience and cannot comprehend where the 
mistake lies! They hear and read the Word 
of God, they cry out and pray, they go to the 
Lord’s Supper, and all is in vain, all is death 
and powerlessness; only sin is alive and 
mighty. Oh, that they would hear! Oh, that 
they would bow their ears to the wisdom of 
God! Then would their peace be as a river, 
and their righteousness as the waves of the 
sea (Is. 48.18) ; then would they know a new 
heavenly desire and power in their hearts. 

What you lack is this: You were never 
truly delivered from the yoke of bondage, you 


70 


never truly tasted what the true faith means, 
never became truly blessed in pure unmerited 
grace. Oh, that you would receive that light 
which one brother cannot give to the other 
but which is a revelation of God in the soul, 
a heavenly gift, which so sets forth Jesus that 
you would see the unspeakable grace in 
which the Heavenly Father, for whose com¬ 
mandments you are slaving, has had such 
mercy upon us, as to deliver up His Son to 
fulfill for us all that the Law can demand 
of us. Then you would see that for you, too, 
He has already fulfilled all that which you 
are working at, and that God has no other 
purpose with His Law than to exhaust and 
slay your self-righteousness, because He 
never has thought that you would be able 
to do anything but sin (Rom. 3.12, 19). 
And you would also see that God through 
the propitiation for our sins is merciful to all 
your iniquities, loves you just as you are, and 
has Himself taken away all your sins and 
inscribed your name in heaven, just as you 
are, all for the sake of Christ, your Brother 
and Mediator! 

If you saw all this in the light of the Spirit, 
and saw how the heavenly Father never 
counts on you, but has His satisfaction in His 
beloved Son, for whose sake He never, never 
looks upon your sins; yes, if you saw, how in 


71 


the midst of your deepest despondency be¬ 
cause of sin you are beauteous and lovely in 
the eyes of God, through Christ, just as you 
are—if you saw this in the light of the Spirit, 
verily, you would weep for love, and leap for 
joy, and everything which hitherto has been 
altogether too difficult and impossible for you 
would become light and pleasant. What was 
it that caused the martyrs to go joyfully to 
the stake, Vincentius, his body in torments, 
to call the glowing coals roses, frail women 
to say that they had never gone with such joy 
to their dances as now to the stake? Nothing 
else than that they were filled with the un¬ 
speakably great grace that the Son of God 
was their Brother and that they through Him 
were friends of God and the desire of His 
eyes. This is what Scripture expressly says: 
“The joy of Jehovah is your strength” (Neh. 
8.10); and again: “I will run the way of 
thy Commandments, when thou shalt enlarge 
my heart” (Ps. 119.32). 

This is the first point as to the condition, 
or state, of the believer, telling us that we 
must be freed from the Taw to be able 
to bring forth fruits unto God. The second 
point is, that even if you could do much 
more good than all believers, not a single one 
of your deeds is pleasing to God as long as 
they do not spring from this evangelical faith 


72 


and love. As long as the Law rules in the 
conscience, it spoils everything you do. You, 
perhaps, do exactly the same deeds as the 
believing and delivered soul; but there is an 
ugly black stain on your deeds which makes 
them even repulsive in the eyes of God. This 
black stain consists in this one thing that you 
do the good for the sake of the Law and not 
of the heart’s own free desire and love, that 
you do the good because of commandments, 
threats and promises and not of an inward 
urge, of free inclination and desire—just as 
it puts an ugly black stain upon a child’s kind¬ 
ness to its mother, if the child was forced to 
it by the rod of its father or was prevailed 
upon by an enticing promise while of course 
the child ought to have shown this kindness 
from its own heart’s feeling for its mother. 
Now it is evident from all the Word of God 
that the Lord God will not have any forced 
services. What He desires is the heart, its 
love and devotion. 

A married man who really loves his wife 
is not satisfied with the mere services he 
receives from her. He would first of all have 
her love. And if he discovers that for the 
sake of his property she only feigns love for 
him, but in reality does not love him, then 
all her kindness will only be an abomination 
to him, and simply kindle his wrath. So with 


73 


God. Before His eyes all that piety and 
godliness is repugnant and rejected which is 
practised only because we “shall,” we “ought” 
we “must,” that is, practised only from a 
legalistic motive, and which does not flow 
forth from a liberated, blessed, and grateful 
spirit, from the love of the bride which says: 
Now I do not so much as pick up a straw in 
order to merit salvation and the friendship of 
God, or to atone for my guilt; for my Bride¬ 
groom of blood has done all this during the 
thirty years that He was a bondservant under 
the Law fur me, and finally suffered the 
bloody death of the Cross. But what little 
.1 do, I do because I do not need to do any¬ 
thing for my pardon; only because He has 
done all for me, and is every day and every 
moment my only righteousness before God; 
only because I now am in such a kingdom of 
grace that all my sins shall never be reckoned 
against me, that I shall never be judged ac¬ 
cording to the Law. This liberty it is that 
moves me so ardently and gladly to do and 
to suffer what my God wills, since He has 
taken away from me the cankerous anxieties 
of my heart over sin and Law. Yes, since 
He has taken upon Himself the great, heavy 
burden, the matter of my salvation, I will 
very willingly take upon me some of these 
lighter burdens—forsake the world and sin; 


74 


subdue my flesh, and serve my neighbor in 
love, with deeds, with words, and with 
patience; give the hungry bread; the homeless 
hospitality; visit some one in sickness and 
some prisoner, forgive some enemy and have 
patience with some troublesome fellow-being 
or some hard calling in life. Since my Lord 
has been so gracious as to be pleased with 
such little matters, it seems almost like a 
paradise to me that I may do the faithful, 
dear Lord some service pleasing to Him. All 
this my heart loves to do, because of His 
exceeding goodness and instituting this king¬ 
dom of grace, so that no sin is reckoned 
against me and I shall never be judged ac¬ 
cording to the Law. 

Such is the true motive for doing that 
which is good. This is indicated by the 
word of the apostle: “For the love of Christ 
constraineth us; because we thus judge, that 
one died for all, therefore all died” (II Cor. 
5.14) ; and this is what the apostle meant 
when he said: “Ye also were made dead to 
the law . . . that we might bring forth fruit 
unto God” (Rom. 7.4). 

You certainly receive your reward here on 
earth also for the good that you do from a 
legalistic motive. It is certainly also profit¬ 
able for your neighbors and your household; 
but it does not constitute the true sancti- 


75 


fication , neither is it the truly good deeds 
pleasing to God, of which He will make 
mention on the Judgment Day. So that 
if it be only a question of salvation, you may 
very well spare yourself the trouble of doing 
good and instead give yourself to a free life 
in sin, you will lose nothing by this; you will 
at any event not be saved by such a holiness 
as springs from a legalistic motive. '‘For as 
many as are of the works of the law are 
under a curse” (Gal. 3.10). Only so much 
good as you do because you are undeservedly 
pardoned, and free from the Law —only so 
much true sanctification and good works do 
you have. Mark and remember this well, 
and write it indelibly into your mind: Only 
so much as springs from grace, from faith 
and love, from your freedom from the Law— 
only so much true sanctification do you have. 

But here some one may, perhaps, ask: 
“Shall the Law, then, be of no service to a 
Christian in his sanctification? And is a 
Christian then so quickened by the joy of faith 
and love that he never does the good from 
any legalistic motive?” Answer: First of 
all, the Law is always of indispensable service 
and blessing in sanctification by the guidance 
and the light we have in its commandments; 
and, secondly, this guidance always becomes 
for us a chastisement , a wholesome and 


76 


needed chastisement and crushing humiliation 
for our crafty heart, which otherwise might 
soon fall into pride, security, levity, and other 
like abominations. But the motive itself and 
the very heart of a Christian’s sanctification 
must be God’s mighty grace. Understand 
this aright, and note: It is quite true that 
the light of grace in faith does not always 
burn with the same beautiful and quickening 
power; faith, joy, and love are often weak¬ 
ened during the journey, and however earn¬ 
estly I may strive, I cannot at will take to 
myself such a burning faith as I would. But 
the matter does not depend on this. If I 
but have such confidence in my God through 
Christ that, whatever my condition, I can 
speak to Him as His child, can believe the 
state of grace itself (Rom. 5.2), albeit with 
a rather dry faith, which, however, keeps 
firmly to the assurances of the Lord, then this 
faith will bring about a willing spirit so that 
I gladly subdue my flesh according to His 
commandment. I do not then feel as light 
of heart as in happier times, when He rejoices 
my heart; no, as for my feelings, a legalistic 
heaviness often comes upon me in my walk, 
so that I feel far more the Law in my inner 
man than the grace and delight of the Gospel. 
But the distinction over against them that 
“busy with the works of the Law” consists 




77 


in this: They who are under the law “busy 
with the works of the Law” with intent and 
purpose, mark, they have outright that con¬ 
ception that our state of grace and our sanc¬ 
tification do depend on our labor of godliness, 
and are thus agreed with themselves in this 
striving, yes, what we are and do is the very 
song of their being, comes first and last. The 
true believer, on the other hand, even during 
his legalistic periods, is nevertheless an enemy 
of his own self-importance, as soon as he 
becomes aware of it. He censures and 
decries it and agrees with God at once in 
His Word, that in us is nothing but sin and 
weakness and only in Christ is both our 
righteousness and our strength. The believer 
presses on to lay hold of Christ and to know 
Him, and the power of His resurrection, and 
he is certain that all will thereby be righted 
again: it is only weakness from which he is 
suffering. His mind and intention are there¬ 
fore evangelical, it is only feeling and his old 
nature that are legalistic. And although he 
must often, as it were, force himself to the do¬ 
ing of that which is good, because he feels the 
resistance of his flesh, it is after all the great 
grace of God on which he believes that moves 
him to the desire of thus subduing his stub¬ 
born flesh. He loves the commandments of 
the Lord, even His threats, yes, His rod and 


78 


chastisement, and this because they assist the 
slaying of the evil flesh; but he has this very 
love for the Law and its threats because he 
believes the unmerited grace—and hence the 
deeps of his heart and his motives are 
evangelical. It is far different if we become 
“captive under a yoke of bondage,” when our 
thoughts, first and last, are centered upon 
ourselves and what we should be and do; and 
by this the childlike confidence is smothered 
and the Law even becomes the ruling power 
in the conscience. Then the life of sin and 
impotence which the Law always brings about 
enters in again. And from this we can then 
see how necessary it is that the conscience be 
free from the Law even for true sanctifica' 
tion. Oh, that every Christian, therefore, 
during all the days of his life would take to 
heart the admonition of the apostle: “For 
freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast 
therefore, and be not entangled again in a 
yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5.1). Thus our Lord 
Christ Himself also says concerning this 
matter: “Abide in my love.” "Abide “in me.” 
“As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, 
except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, 
except ye abide in me” (John 15). 


VII. 


The Ground of This Glorious Freedom 

“Yes,” you say, “I have, of course, seen 
glorious words and proofs of the great, com¬ 
forting truth, that we who are lost before the 
Law and cling to Christ, shall not be judged 
according to the Law, but be as free from its 
judgments as the woman is free from the 
law of the husband, when he is dead and 
buried. I have also seen how entirely neces¬ 
sary this freedom is, not only in order to 
remain in the grace of God, but also for true 
sanctification. But it is, however, wholly 
impossible to be able really to believe and lay 
hold of this freedom for my own part. For, 
partly, it is altogether too glorious and gra¬ 
cious that I, poor sinner, shall live in such a 
constant and irrevocable grace with God as if 
no Law or sin existed; partly, also, I do not 
feel the least of such a grace and freedom, 
but feel rather the opposite, namely that I 
am still ceaselessly accused and judged by 
the Law. How can I, then, believe that I am 
entirely free from all judgments of the Law, 

79 


80 


that the Lord God loves me and considers me 
as if I never sinned, as if no Law and there¬ 
fore no sin existed, but purity alone, right¬ 
eousness, and good will before His eyes— 
and all this only for the sake of Christ? No, 
it is too great, too glorious, and I surely feel 
the sin and the judgments of the Law upon 
me.” 

This is a deep argument, not as to its 
thought, but as to its rootage, because it is 
imbedded in our very nature, for the Law 
and the ideas of the Law have certainly been 
obscured by the Fall, but lie, however, so 
deeply commingled with all human nature that 
even the heathen, who never have heard a 
word from Sinai, nevertheless plague them¬ 
selves unto death because of the voice of the 
Law in their hearts (Rom. 2.14, 15). And, 
secondly, at the Fall it became our very na¬ 
ture not to believe and heed God , His work 
and Word, but qnly believe ourselves, our 
feelings and fancies. This is the reason why 
the most evangelical Christians, provided 
they are awake, are in feeling and conscience 
much more legalistic than evangelical— 
although they certainly also have much peace 
and joy in the faith, when they have learned 
to comprehend this freedom of theirs and 
receive grace to believe it. 

But where shall we find a means against 


/ 


81 


the overmastering inclination of our nature 
only to see and feel the Law, yea, against ali 
these mighty contradictions of feeling, con¬ 
science, reason, the unbelief, and the devil? 
There can be no more effective means against 
all this mighty power of unbelief than cease¬ 
lessly to consider the grounds of this glorious 
liberty of which we are now treating, consider 
whence this measureless boon is derived and 
on what it rests, that it is the very good plea¬ 
sure and the very deed of the Almighty God, 
the work of His own beloved Son, through 
all His fulfillment of the Law and suffering 
its penalty in our stead. As the apostle says: 
“We were made a heritage—according to the 
purpose of him who worketh all things after 
the counsel of his will; to the end that we 
should be unto the praise of his glory” (Eph 
1.11, 12). What, then, can I do to the 
matter? What is my power against the good 
pleasure of the Almighty? What can I say 
to it, when the great God himself has been 
pleased to do something after the counsel of 
His will? May He not do in His affairs 
whatever He will ? When it has pleased Him 
to show this great, inexpressible grace to 
man, to establish this kingdom of grace on 
earth and send His own beloved Son under 
the Law, in order to fulfill for us all its 
demands and suffer for us its curse—what 

The Believer. 6 . 


82 


can I do to that? It is certainly altogether 
too great and glorious; but what God does, 

indeed, is all great and incomprehensible. 

* 

What I, poor being, am and do, feel and 
think, is on the other hand only as wind¬ 
blown straws compared with a great moun¬ 
tain. The Lord Christ says now expressly: 
“God so loved the world, that He gave His 
only begotten Son,” when all flesh was through 
the Fall so corrupted that no man could ful¬ 
fill the Law of God, but all men sinned, 
whether they would or not, and every soul 
therefore lay under an eternal curse. The 
Scripture says now expressly: “When the 
fulness of the time came, God sent forth his 
Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 
that he might redeem them that were under 
the law” (Gal. 4.4, 5). And again: “Christ 
redeemed us from the curse of the law, 
having become a curse for us; for it is 
written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on 
a tree” (Gal. 3.13). Yea, the Scripture says 
expressly: “Christ is the end of the law ”— 
“Christ is the end of the law unto righteous¬ 
ness to every one that believeth” (Rom. 
10.4). And the apostle explains the gracious 
thought and counsel of God in this wise: “As 
through the one man’s disobedience the many 
were made sinners, even so through the obe¬ 
dience of the one shall the many be made 


83 


righteous” (Rom. 5.19). Mark the words 
well! This is God's eternal counsel as to 
man, and the good pleasure of His will. As 
we have become the servants of sin and death 
through the disobedience of the one, so we 
should also receive righteousness and life 
through the obedience of One. It is con¬ 
sequently One that shall fulfill the Law for 
all; it is through the obedience of One that 
all shall become righteous. How shall we 
in time and eternity sufficiently praise this 
inexpressible love of the Father? 

First. We will now pause at one or two of 
the passages cited that speak most directly 
concerning the ground of our freedom from 
the Law, and in a quiet, simple meditation, as 

if we never before had seen such words, wait 

» 

for the grace and presence of the Spirit of 
God, if so be that it may please Him to bless 
a few weary souls with the refreshing of 
faith and rest which Jesus promises to such 
souls. The rich and satisfied, on the other 
hand, He will leave empty. Let no one think 
that any and every one is to be able to per¬ 
ceive the gloriousness of the grace of God 
and receive the blessedness of faith. No, the 
Lord “hath mercy on whom he will, and 
whom he will he hardeneth” (Rom. 9.18; 
Matt. 13.11, 12; 11.25). We must needs 


84 


bow before Him, if we are to receive the 
grace of His Spirit, otherwise we shall receive 
only stones for bread. The first of the pas¬ 
sages we were to meditate on is found in Gal. 
4.4, 5 and reads as follows: 

“When the fulness of the time came, God 
sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born 
under the law, that he might redeem them 
that zvere under the law.” 

Mark this high, eternal ground for our 
freedom from the law.” “God sent his Son 
under the law.” “God sent his Son under 
the Law,” and as it reads here expressly: 
“That he might redeem them that were under 
the law.” Mark you, these are the very 
words, “that he might redeem them that were 
under the lazv.” You poor souls, praise and 
magnify Him forever! This very comforting 
main thought of the passage is so prominent 
that each and every one must see it. 

But the holy apostle has written his words 
with much reflection and deep spirit so that 
they demand a searching consideration. He 
says first: “When the fulness of the time 
came,” that is, “the time appointed of the 
Father,” when the Old Testament regency 
(v. 2) was to end and all the promises of the 
prophecy and the types were to be fulfilled. 
These words, “When the fulness of the time 


85 


came,” consequently direct our eyes to the 
long golden chain of divine promises through¬ 
out the Old Testament, the types and pictures, 
from the very first promise given on the day 
of the Fall of the seed of the woman which 
should bruise the head of the serpent, to all 
these divine foretellings and types in the 
complicated Levitic worship, where so many 
thousands of sacrificial beasts, beside the offi¬ 
ciating priests, all typified the Great High- 
priest and the great Sacrificial Victim. Verily, 
an infinitely powerful, a thousandfold testi¬ 
mony of God, compared with which all our 
thoughts, fancies, feelings, and contradictions 
must pale and come to naught. W hat do we 
avail against a whole long world-age of thou¬ 
sandfold types and promises of God Himself? 

And what do all these promises and all 
these bloody sacrificial beasts in the pre¬ 
figuring worship say? In Hebrews 10.1-7 
we read: “For the law having a shadow 
of the good things to come, not the very image 
of the things, can never with the same 
sacrifices year by year, which they offer con¬ 
tinually, make perfect them that draw nigh. 
Else would they not have ceased to be offered ? 
because the worshippers, having been once 
cleansed, would have had no more conscious¬ 
ness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is 
a remembrance made of sins year by year. 


86 


For it is impossible that the blood of bulls 
and goats should take away sins. Where- 
fore zvhen he [Christ] cometh into the world, 
he saith [to the Father], Sacrifice and offer¬ 
ing thou woiddest not, bat a body didst thou 
prepare for me; — Lo, I am come (in the roll 
of the book it is written of me) to do thy 
will, 0 GodF Thus the Son of God speaks, 
when He comes into the world. “In the book 
it is written of me”; the entire holy book of 
the Old Testament treats of Me, that "I 
will do thy will, O God.” It is not simply 
the sacrificial beasts Thou wouldst have,—O, 
Father, no, the body Thou didst prepare for 
Me—it was My body, which they all typified; 
it is My body which shall be the sacrifice, 
which Thou wouldst have, O God. May God 
open our minds to such an inexpressibly glori¬ 
ous text! Here we see the ground of our free¬ 
dom from the Law. Here we see the expla¬ 
nation of the text: “Christ is the end of the 
law,” and “the Lamb of God.” God open 
our minds and hearts! 

We have now seen how the holy apostle 
has cited the prophetic passage here quoted, 
Ps. 40.6, 7, with his eye on the Antitype of 
the Sacrifices, namely the body of Christ, 
which was to be given as an atoning sacrifice 
for our sins. But we read in the sixth verse 
of the Psalm quoted in part something which 


87 


is remarkable for our subject. It is this: 
“Mine ears hast Thou opened.” And the 
word “opened” means pierced through. The 
expression plainly refers to a passage in the 
Levitical law that treats of such servants as 
wished to remain in the service of theii 
master all their life, and as a sign of this 
voluntary service were to have their ears 
bored through. This legal enactment is 
found in Exodus 21, and reads thus: “If the 
servant shall plainly say, I love my master, 
my wife, and my children; I will not go out 
free: then his master shall bring him unto 
God, and shall bring him unto the door, or un¬ 
to the door-post; and his master shall bore his 
ear through with an awl; and he shall serve 
him for ever.” And this the Lord Christ has 
now in the prophecy applied to Himself and 
said to His Father: “Mine ears hast Thou 
bored through; I will not go out free; I will 
be Thy servant. I will do Thy will, O God. 
My body shall be the sacrifice, which Thou 
hast intended by all these sacrifices; in the 
book is written of Me, that / will do Thy will, 
O God.” And then the apostle adds: “by which 
will we have been sanctified through the offer¬ 
ing of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 

In the words of our text we read that the 
Sen of God was placed under the Law; “God 
sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the 


88 


law, that he might redeem them that were 
under the law.” He was consequently to 
be under the Law during His whole life, and 
that most assuredly not on His own account 
but “that he might redeem them that were 
under the law.” From the eighth day, when 
He, according to the Law, received the cir¬ 
cumcision, His whole life was one continual 
fulfillment of the Law for us. 

The Law demands, justly and repeatedly, 
that we love God of all our heart, of all our 
soul, of all our might, of all our mind, and 
our neighbor as ourselves; but no one of 
us fulfills this. Then Christ came and did it 
for as. Fie loved God with all His heart 
and of all His soul; it was His meat that He 
did the will of the Father (cf. John 4.34) 
And He loved His neighbor as Himself. He 
gave His life for the brethren, yes, for His 
enemies. And the apostle says expressly, that 
all this took place for us, took place “to 
redeem them that were under the law.” Con¬ 
sider all of this well, and then to your great 
and blessed surprise you will find that we 
never need to keep the Law in order thereby 
to possess the grace and salvation of God, 
but that this task is by the great mercy of 
God wholly laid upon another, upon our 
Mediator and Fulfiller of the Law. “God so 
loved the world, that He gave His only 


89 



« 


begotten Son.” The Fall was so completely 
destructive of all our powers, that in us was 
found not the least particle which was not 
poisoned and filled with sin and evil, so that 
not one single being of the whole race could 
fulfill the Law of the Lord, but everything 
which is in us wars against the Law in all 
its commandments; and this, too, is felt deeply 
and bitterly by those who have been touched 
by the holiness of God, so that they struggle 
and labor to fulfill the Law. And when God 
because of His eternal truth and righteousness 
could not yield one letter or tittle of the Law, 
and all flesh therefore lay under an everlast¬ 
ing curse, which we every day feel, then, 
constrained by His unchangeable mercy and 
love toward man, God in His gracious counsel 
determined to send His own Son to fulfill 
the Law for us. It is this that lies in the 
precious passage: “When the fulness of the 
time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a 
woman, born under the Law, that he might 
redeem them that were under the Law.” And 
this is the reason why God does not look 
upon us and judge us according to the Law, 
and therefore “there is now no condemnation 
to them that are in Christ Jesus,” but they aie 
in Him as “pleasing” to God as if they had 
never committed a single sin. 


90 


Second . But it was not sufficient that the 
whole life of the Son of God on earth during 
more than thirty years was a continual ful¬ 
fillment of the Law for us; He must also at 
last endure the punishment we had merited, 
namely the curse of the whole Law, in order 
to redeem us from the same. The second 
passage that we were to consider treats of 
this, and it reads: 

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of 
the law, having become a curse for us; for 
it is written, Cursed is every one that liangeth 
on a tree.” (Gal 3.13). 

Here, then, we have the final and chief 
ground for our freedom from the Law. Here 
we may see both terrible and glorious things. 
If we wish to cull from this passage and 
in briefer words to express the ground 
for the believers’ freedom from the Law, it 
is as follows: Christ a curse —terrible sen¬ 
tence ! Christ a curse — sublime mystery ! 
The very Blessed One of God a curse— 
strange remedy! Curse becomes blessing, 
poison a drink of health, wrath grace, death 
life. 

The words of the apostle are very deep and 
require once more thorough consideration. 
First, he uses the name of Christ (the 
Anointed). This leads us to think of the 


91 


whole office and the holy anointing of this 
person, whereby He has been consecrated for 
the high office of Atoner and Protector, High- 
priest and King of men; for these offices men 
were to be consecrated by anointment with 
sweet-smelling oil. Two comfort-bringing 
hints. The whole mission of the Son of God 
to earth, His office for which He had been 
anointed and consecrated by the Father, was 
precisely to be the Atoner and Protector of 
men. We ought then to expect something of 
the kind from Him. And, secondly, the 
sweet-smelling oil indicates that since all men 
after the Fall lay under the curse, they were 
before the holy God a stench and corruption; 
and that therefore Christ as the Anointed 
must now mediate in order that by the sweet 
smell of His ointment He might drive away 
the stench of our sins and make us well¬ 
pleasing unto the Father. Mark: It is al¬ 
ways another that is to do it—not we, sinners 
—always another. This the Scripture indi¬ 
cates everywhere. 

But now the apostle says that this Blessed 
One of the Lord—He in whom the Father 
was well pleased, “the Beloved,”—has become 
a curse. This is a terrible word. First, the 
word “curse” itself signifies something very 
terrible, namely all the evil with which God 
in the Law threatens sinners. Just as the 


92 


word “blessing” embraces all the grace of God 
and all the good which God in His love can 
outpour upon His friends in time and eternity; 
so its opposite, “curse,” signifies first the divine 
wrath and abhorrence, then all the evil which 
God in this His holy wrath is able to bring 
upon His enemies in time and eternity. It 
would, indeed, have been frightful enough, if 
the apostle had written that Christ became 
cursed or overwhelmed by a curse. But the 
holy apostle uses the still more frightful 
expression that Christ became a curse , became 
the curse itself. In the same way in II Cor. 
5.21 he says, “Him who knew no sin he 
(God) made to be sin on our behalf”—not 
only burdened Him with the sin of all the 
world, but made Him to be sin. By such 
peculiar expressions the Holy Spirit has sig¬ 
nified that the Lord Christ was so deluged 
with the sin of all the world and with the 
curse of the Law that He could be considered 
as changed into nothing but sin and curse, 
could be called sin itself, the curse itself. But 
that which in this matter is of the greatest 
importance is that we see by the prophetic 
passage, Deuteronomy 21.23, which is cited by 
the apostle, that it was not merely before men 
but before God himself that Christ was a 
curse; for it is written: “He that is hanged 
is accursed of God.” And this was not due 


93 


to the manner of death, hanging on a tree, 
but to the cause of it—sin—which had merited 
the punishment; for when Peter hung on the 
cross because of his faith and confession, he 
was not on that account accursed of God. 
But when the apostle here applies this word 
to Christ he has this great reason for doing 
so, that Christ actually was before God a 
sinner, a great sinner, a sinner above all sin¬ 
ners on earth. 

And with this we come to the most thought¬ 
worthy circumstance explaining the frightful 
words, that Christ was a sinner in the sight 
of God and became a curse, namely, that all 
of it happened for ns, as the words of the 
apostle also expressly state. He does not 
say that Christ became a curse on account 
of His own person, but for us—for us. All 
weight is here attached to the words: ‘'for 
us.” For Christ, as far as His person is 
concerned, is certainly innocent, holy, and 
blessed and could therefore not because of 
His own person become ‘‘a curse of God”; 
but since according to the Law all great sin¬ 
ners—murderers for example—were to be 
hanged and be cursed of God, Christ must 
also according to the same Law be hanged 
on a tree for a curse. He has taken on Him¬ 
self the person of a great sinner and mur¬ 
derer, yes, not merely of one, but of all sin- 


94 


ners and murderers together. For we are 
all before God great sinners and murderers 
and therefore subject to everlasting death and 
condemnation. Since Christ now had taken 
upon Himself our persons, our cause before 
God, our sins and the punishment which they 
merited, He must stand before God and pass 
for that which we are, namely sinners, mur¬ 
derers and malefactors, and as such suffer 
the penalty. This—that Christ should be the 
very chief of sinners on earth—all the proph¬ 
ets had clearly foreseen in the Spirit. The 
prophet Isaiah says: “Jehovah hath laid on 
him the iniquity of us all . . . he was num¬ 
bered with the transgressors” (Is. 53.6, 12). 
And in the fortieth Psalm we hear the same 
person who said: “Mine ears hast thou 
opened; To, I am come; in the roll of the 
book it is written of me,” immediately after¬ 
ward make the lament, “Innumerable evils 
have compassed me about; mine iniquities 
have overtaken me, so that I am not able to 
look up; they are more than the hairs of my 
head” (Ps. 40.12). 

How strange this may sound to the great 
darkness of unbelief in our heart, we should, 
nevertheless, consider this, that, unless Scrip¬ 
ture throughout lies as to the great funda¬ 
mental doctrine that God “laid all our sins 
upon His Son,” and that Jesus is “the Lamb 


95 


of God that taketh away the sins of the 
world,” all sins must be His sins as actually 
as if He himself had committed them. Con¬ 
cerning this our Doctor Luther says: “As 
Christ is for all sinners the Mediator and 
Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of 
the world, He is not before God innocent 
and without sin, like as the Son of God in 
glory, but He is a sinner,” a little while 
forsaken of God, who bears and has lying 
on his back the sins of Paul, who was a 
reviler and persecutor of God, the sins of 
Peter, who denied his Lord, the sins of David, 
who committed adultery and murder, and so 
forth. In brief: He is the person who now 
stands before God as the representative of 
all sinners and on whom is cast the sins of 
all men in the whole world who ever have 
been, who are now, and who shall be. For 
when the merciful heavenly Father saw that 
by the power of sin and the curse of the 
Law we were being so grievously oppressed 
and were in such severe imprisonment, that 
it was through eternity impossible for us to 
free ourselves by any strength of ours, He 
gave us His only beloved Son as a Mediator 
and Saviour, laid all the sins of all men upon 
Him, and said: Thou shalt be the sinner that 
took the forbidden fruit in Paradise; Thou 
shalt be David that committed adultery and 


96 


murder; Thou shalt be Saul, that persecuted 
and slew my saints; in brief, Thou shalt be 
that which all men are, as if Thou alone hadst 
committed the sins of all men; therefore 
attend now to the payment and satisfaction 
for them.” Here are reasons and causes 
enough why Christ must become a curse. 
And it seems that there are reasons also for 
expecting some important fruits of so great 
a work as this, when the Lord lays the sins 
of all the world upon His beloved Son, casts 
Him under the curse of the Law, and lets 
Him hang upon a tree. O God, have mercy 
upon our poor blinded hearts, disperse the 
thick darkness, and banish the evil power 
which controls our minds, so that we are not 
fit to see Thy glory! 

Let us now see what the apostle says that 
Christ accomplished by becoming a curse for 
us. The apostle says that Christ thereby 
redeemed ns from the curse of the Law. And 
here he uses a word which properly means 
ransom, release. It comes from a word that 
means market, and was originally used of 
the freeing of slaves by purchase. At such a 
market a court was always established. When 
any one handed over the sum asked for a 
slave, in order to set him at liberty, this pur¬ 
chase must be examined by the court, certi¬ 
fied, and established. This process at the 


97 


liberation of slaves furnishes us instructive 
hints as to the nature of the redemption 
brought about through Christ. First, it was 
an act of purchase, for which there always is 
required a value, a price of purchase which 
corresponds in value to that which is bought; 
and here the costly sum was not of silver or 
gold, but the precious blood of Christ, or His 
obedience both of life and of suffering. Sec¬ 
ondly, this liberation of ours took place 
through Christ according to law and justice; 
it was tested in the judgment of the heavenly 
Father, approved of and established, so that 
it is eternally valid, as the Scripture says: 
“He hath offered one sacrifice for sins for 
ever” (Hebr. 10.12), “having obtained eternal 
redemption” (Hebr. 9.12). 

Yes, this is the testimony of the Scripture: 
Christ actually has redeemed us from the 
curse of the Law when He became a curse 
for us. And this we learned as children from 
our catechism to believe and confess: “Jesus 
Christ is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a 
lost and condemned creature, secured and 
delivered me from all sins, from death, and 
from the power of the devil, not with silver 
and gold, but with His holy and precious 
blood,” and so forth. But how do we believe 
this? We have also seen how infinitely much 
it cost the dear Lord to redeem us, namely, 

The Believer. 7 . 


/ 


98 


that He not only must leave His choirs of 
angels, hymning His praise, and during more 
than thirty years go about in the form of a 
servant, on an earth cursed by sin, willingly 
bearing the yoke of the Law, in order to 
accomplish a perfect fulfillment of the Law; 
but that He also at last must be a curse for 
us and permit all the brooks of Belial, all the 
wrath of the righteousness we had violated, 
all the anguish of death and hell to vent them¬ 
selves upon Him. Oh, woe to the darkness 
of the blinded heart, that we cannot see the 
full meaning of all this! Could we but 
realize it, and in an everlasting glory and 
praise, in a blissful security and contentment 
give the dear and holy Lord the honor due 
Him, since by His precious redemption He 
has done all things well for us—rendered full 
satisfaction for our sins to gain us perfect 
freedom, security and salvation! Let the 
devil and sin rage ever.so wildly in my flesh, 
let sins be a thousand times more numerous 
and more heinous than they are—if the Son 
of God was made sin for us and hung on a 
tree as a curse—this is certainly a thousand 
times more than all my sins. And further: 
If God has sent His Son under the Law, yes, 
under sin, death, and all the fury of the devil, 
for no other reason than our salvation, then 

I understand that God does not look for anv 

* 


I 


99 


ability in us to overcome these powers; then 
I begin to see that it is as Paul says, God gave 
us the Law that every mouth may be stopped, 
and the world may be brought under the 
judgment of God, and not that we are to be 
righteous before the Law. But then I also 
understand that the Lord will not reckon sins 
to them who believe in His Son, and that He 
will never judge them according to the Law. 

Oh, may God more and more open our 
minds that we may see these glorious things! 
And those who feel the need of this grace and 
comfort, but still, in spite of all the testimony 
of God as to His Son, cannot get it into their 
hearts—may they often hide themselves in 
a quiet prayer-chamber and continue to pray 
for faith and opened minds until the Lord 
gives them this precious gift. For after all 
everything depends on the mercy of God. 
And if we only had the eye of faith to see 
it, we would be altogether in Paradise- -how¬ 
ever unworthy we might be—such glorious 
things God has actually given us in His Son. 
God increase our faith! 


VIII. 


A Brief and Blessed Summary 

If we now finally wish to make a brief 
summary of the principal points that belong 
to this blessed freedom—the sum total of all 
that Christ secured for us, when He became 
our Brother and Fulffller of the Law, and at 
last became a “curse for us,”—then the Lord 
God has Himself already made this summary 
in a passage of the Holy Scriptures where He 
proclaims His gracious counsel concerning 
the instituting of a new covenant with men, 
a new and better way of salvation than the 
Covenant of the Law. May God open our 
minds as we now proceed to consider this!— 
The precious passage of the Bible is in Jere¬ 
miah 31.31-34, and reads as follows: 

“ Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that 
I will make a new covenant with the house 
of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not 
according to the covenant that I made zvith 
their fathers in the day that I took them by the 
hand to bring ' them out of the land of Egypt; 
which my covenant they brake, although I was 

100 


% 


r < * 


101 


a husband unto them, saith Jehovah. But this 
is the covenant that I zvill make with the house 
of Israel after those days, saith Jehovah: I 
will put my law in their inward parts, and in 
their heart will I zvrite it; and I will be their 
God, and they shall be my people. And they 
shall teach no more every man his brother, 
saying, Know Jehovah; for they shall all know 
me, from the least of them unto the greatest 
of them, saith Jehovah: for I will forgive 
their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no 
more A 

True, indeed, this was not the first promise 
concerning the new covenant, and neither was 
it the last—we may truthfully say that all 
of the Old Testament is one great promise, 
one single great proclamation and prophecy 
of Christ and of the new covenant in Him, 
from the time that God on the day of the 
Fall spoke of a “seed of woman” that should 
“bruise the serpent’s head,” and down to the 
last chapter of the last prophet, where we 
read of “the sun of righteousness arising with 
healing in its wings” (Mai. 4.2). We have 
here previously considered how the whole Law 
and all the complicated sacrificial worship 
spoke only of Christ and of the sacrifice of 
His body. But the promise just quoted con¬ 
cerning the new covenant has its value in 
this, that it has summarized in one passage 


102 


everything which distinguishes the new cove¬ 
nant, and moreover, by plain and definite 
words of God Himself. But that neverthe¬ 
less almost no man sees what is within, and 
begins to rejoice, thank, and love God for it, 
but nearly every man still walks with his whole 
soul in the old covenant of the Law—this is 
merely a remarkable proof of the power the 
devil has over the minds of men, and a proof 
of the truth of that which the Lord God right 
here says, that no brother shall teach the other 
to know the Lord. He, to whom God is gra¬ 
cious, obtains it, and the rest are hardened (cf. 
Rom. 11.7, 8). And He has hid “these things 
from the wise and understanding” and 
revealed them “unto babes” (Matt. 11.25). 

First of all this, to begin with, ought to 
awaken the attention of every one that the 
Lord says: “I will make a new covenant— 
1 will make a new covenant.” He says ex¬ 
pressly: “Not according to the covenant that 
I* made with their fathers, in the day that I 
took them by the hand to bring them out of 
the land of Egypt” and came with them to 
Mount Sinai. Mark, however, that the Lord 
says that He would make a “covenant” that 
would not be according to the covenant of 
the Law—not such a covenant, not such a 
covenant, He says. Oh, how strange, that 
nevertheless no man believes this, almost no 


103 


one knows of any other covenant than the 
covenant of the Law, that is to say, in a living 
manner! 

But the Lord God also states explicitly 
wherein the difference between the two cove¬ 
nants should consist. It was especially in 
three points: First, that while in the former 
covenant the Law was written on tables of 
stone, and the hearts of men were unwilling 
so that the Lord “must compel them,” now 
the Law was to be written in the very heart 
and in the mind. This means that God will 
give us the Holy Spirit’s fervent desire and 
love for the good, which becomes in us an 
inner, living law. Secondly, that while the 
former covenant’s laws and ordinances could 
be imparted by one man to another, because 
the moral law, although obscured, belongs to 
the very nature even of the heathen (Rom. 
2.14), the new covenant, on the other hand, 
was such, that none could enter into it by all 
the teaching' one brother can give to another, 
but, as Christ expounds this, they must “all 
be taught of God” (John 6.45). This is what 
Jesus often said: “No man can come to me, 
except the Father that sent me draw him” 
(John 6.44). “No one knoweth . . . who the 
Father is, save the Son, and he to whomso¬ 
ever the Son willeth to reveal him” (Luke 
10.22). And the apostle: “No man can 


104 


4 


say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.” 
(I Cor. 12.3). But the third point of dif¬ 
ference was that while in the former covenant 
there was always a strict demand for payment 
for sins and the sinner must suffer the penalty 
for his sins, in the new covenant, on the other 
hand, the sins were to be forgiven, remitted, 
not imputed, “be no more remembered.” Bu: 
this point was introduced by a significant 
“for”—“for I will forgive their iniquity” 
(Jer. 31.34), which shows that this forgive¬ 
ness is the ground and reason for the two 
previous points. Yes, and so it is. It is the 
testimony of all Scripture and of all experience 
that then only does a man learn to know God, 
and then only is the Law written in the heart, 
by a fervent desire to run the way of the 
Lord s commandments, (Ps. 119.32), when 
He forgives man all sins and comforts his 
heart. 

This is what the apostle affirms so strongly 
against those who even in his time thought 
that the comforting gospel doctrine, the 
preaching of faith (cf. Rom. 10.8), would 
make the law of none effect, and that 
on the contrary the Law was to work sancti¬ 
fication. He says to them: “Oh, foolish 
Galatians—this only would I learn from you, 
Received ye the Spirit by the works of the 
law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so 


105 


foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye 
now perfected in the flesh? Did ye suffer 
so many things in vain? if it be indeed in 
vain. He therefore that supplieth to you the 
Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth 
he it by the works of the law, or by the 
hearing of faith?” (Gal. 3.1-5). And this 
he also says to the Romans: “Do we then 
make the law of none effect through faith? 
God forbid: nay, we establish the law” (Rom. 
3.31). And thus the Lord God says here 
(Jer. 31) : “The law shall be written in 

their heart and mind: for I will forgive their - 
iniquity, and their sin will I remember no 
more.” And the event recorded in Acts 10. 
43, 44, tells us that just as Peter spoke the 
word: “To him bear all the prophets wit¬ 
ness, that through his name every one that 
believeth on him shall receive remission of 
sins” the Holy Spirit fell on all them that 
heard the word. We must therefore learn 
thoroughly to reject the idea that there is still 
another preaching, besides the preaching of 
faith, which will give the Holy Spirit and 
sanctification. No, it is exactly this preaching 
of faith alone that gives the Holy Spirit, no 
other preaching does. No man becomes a 
believer and is justified in Christ without the 
Holy Spirit; and where the Holy Spirit 


106 


dwells, there He works sanctification. As 
also the old hymn verse says: 

“With faith God’s Spirit comes, good, kind, 
New life on us to shower, 

And work in us another mind 
And slay the carnal power.” 

And all piety which is not born of grace and 
faith constitutes only the “dead works” of 
nature or “works of the law” forced forth, 
which are all under the curse (Gal. 3.10) : 
Therefore the apostle says expressly that 
which we have considered above: “For I 
through the law died unto the law, that I 
might live unto God” (Gal. 2.19) ; and again: 
“But now we have been discharged from the 
law, having died unto that wherein we were 
held; so that we serve in newness of the 
spirit, and not in oldness of the letter” (Rom. 
7.6). This the Lord God also means when 
He says here: “I will put my law in their 
inward parts, and in their heart will I write 
it.—For I will forgive their iniquity, and 
their sin will I remember no more.” And 
this Divine doctrine of sanctification never 
excludes the loving and serious use of admo¬ 
nition, or the faithful husbandman’s cleansing 
of the branches, but it simply reveals the 
folly of cleansing the dead branches, which 
under all circumstances are to be burned, even 


107 


if they be ever so well cleansed. But this 
inner life, this love and desire for the good, 
comes only through grace overflowing upon 
a crushed sinner, for this grace melts the 
heart and gives the Holy Spirit. Thus we 
understand, then, the words of the Lord God: 
“I will put my law in their heart, for I will 
forgive their iniquity and their sins will I 
remember no more.” 

Our Church’s father in the faith, Luther, 
speaks of this gracious counsel of God with 
words like the following: “When our Lord 
God could not make men pious and good by 
all His commandments, judgments, threats, 
punishments, and plagues, but saw how they 
only externally did a few compulsory deeds 
and inwardly became the more contrary 
toward Him, the more He forced and threat¬ 
ened them, then He said unto Himself: “1 

will use another method with men; I will 
begin to do them so much good that they 
cannot help loving Me. I will make a new 
covenant with them: I will give them My 
Son. I will let Him take upon Himself the 
fulfillment of the whole Law for their sakes; 
and at last He shall endure upon the accursed 
tree the condemnation which they have 
merited that they may be entirely guiltless 
before the Law. And then I will assure them 
of My eternal love and of their eternal 


108 


blessedness with Me in heaven. When they 
believe this, they will love Me, and be both 
blessed and holy. This is the covenant I will 
make with them, saith the Lord.’ ” 

Of the same gracious counsel and eternal 
covenant of God for His Son’s sake never to 
reckon unto them their sins, who live in His 
faith, never to judge them according to the 
Law—of this the evangelically enlightened 
Doctor Anton writes in the following manner: 
“The Law is God’s unchangeable will and 
word; therefore the strictness in His Law, as 
being His own word, could not be remitted, 
appeased, or softened, except through a com¬ 
plete satisfaction in accordance with the Law 
The Lawgiver could not possibly ever expect 
of fallen man himself to render satisfaction. 
Therefore He, the wonderful and faithful 
God, impelled by His eternal mercy and love 
for the fallen child, let His demand of perfect 
righteousness in man fall; but not otherwise 
than that He in His divine wisdom conceived 
another means of still maintaining His Law 
in full honor, namely that He gave us His 
Son for its fulfillment. Thereby the Law has 
lost nothing, but has rather gained both in 
fulfillment and in dignity. Because Christ’s 
payment has by God been found valid, no 
satisfaction is any longer necessary for our 
salvation. And the Law sufifers no dishonor, 


109 


whether by Christ, or by them who receive 
Him, His brothers and sisters, that live by 
His grace; yes, the Law retains even with all 
other men on earth its full dignity now as 
formerly, when they hear what a costly satis¬ 
faction God demanded and received. And 
the faithful are hid and concealed and “in 
Him made full” (Col. 2.10), wherefore also 
the Law cannot seek anything from them, but 
is completely satisfied. 

Since, therefore, sin is now atoned for, and 
the Law satisfied, the believer has no longer 
any reason to fear the wrath of God; on the 
contrary, the whole Divine love and Fatherly 
favor is upon him, and no human reason can 
comprehend or believe the love wherewith 
God embraces and cares for such a child; for 
God is properly in His being an infinite love— 
God is love (I John 4.8). And this love is 
now no longer hampered by sin and Law. 
“God commendeth (or declareth) his ozvn 
love toward us, in that, while zve zvere yet 
sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, 
being now justified by his blood, shall we be 
saved from the wrath of God through him. 
For if, while we were enemies, we were recon¬ 
ciled to God through the death of his Son, 
much more, being reconciled, shall we be 
saved by his life” (Rom. 5.8-10). In other 
words, if God so loved man, when no atoner 


110 


interceded for him, when we were only 
“sinners” and “enemies,” that He gave His 
only Son for us, how much more shall He 
not now love man when man’s sin is removed 
and the blood of His own Son speaks for 
man, and he now through faith clings to God. 
The Scripture says that we are then “one 
body, and one Spirit” with Him (Eph. 4.4). 
But “no man ever hated his own flesh; but 
nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ 
also the church” (Eph. 5.29). Mark the 
mystery, the saved and believing man is God’s 
own work; God himself has redeemed him; 
God himself has converted and sanctified 
him; and every one usually loves his own 
work. This is our great folly that we look 
upon ourselves and our own merit; if God 
looked to that, no flesh would be saved. As 
surely as God cannot lie, He looks not upon 
man’s own merit, when man honors the Son 
and believes in Him. God sees man only in 
Him—and then man is exceedingly fair and 
precious in His sight. Thus the Scripture 
testifies: We are “to the praise of the glory 
of his grace, which he freely bestowed on 
us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1.6). So God 
Himself says: “Since thou hast bfeen 
precious in my sight, and honorable, and I 
have loved thee.” To whom does the Lord 
speak so? To some one so pious and holy 


ill 


that he deserved His love ? The Lord adds: 
“Yet thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; 
but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel.—I 
have, not burdened thee with offerings, nor 
wearied thee with frankincense.—But thou 
hast burdened me with thy sins, thou hast 
wearied me with thine iniquities. I, even I, 
am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for 
mine own sake; and I will not remember thy 
sins” (Is. 43.4, 22-25). 

Now since we thus are freed from all sin, 
the judgments of the Law, and the wrath of 
God, and are under the infinite love of God, 
are we not even now blessed? The Scripture 
testifies: “He saved us” (Tit. 3.5), “Now 
are we children of God” (I John 3.2), we 
are already friends of God and heirs of 
heaven (John 15.15, 17, 24). Is not all this 
that which is meant by being blessed? Pre- 
torius says: “Listen to what I wish to ask 
you: If I am not yet blessed, but must 
together with the unbelieving wait until my 
last hour for my blessedness, what is Christ, 
then? What are, then, all the assurances of 
God? What is, then, my baptism and my 
regeneration ? What, then, is my faith in 
Christ? Why has He given me His Holy 
Spirit? Why does He give me His body and 
His blood? Why do I thank Him? Why 
am I happy? Why do I call God my Father? 


112 


All these things assure me that I am already 
blessed, although not yet at Home, not yet 
in the full enjoyment of my hope. But it is 
nevertheless just as certain as if I were 
already in heaven” (Anton). 

And he who even now is God’s child and 
friend, and even now in this life declared 
free from all judgments of the Law—he shall 
also in the last Judgment be free from all his 
sins. When the Lord says that He has “cast 
all our (their) sins into the depths of the sea” 
(Micha 7.19) and that He will no more 
remember them, we may rest in confidence 
that they will not be brought forth on the last 
day. As also the Lord Christ indicates in his 
description of the Last Judgment (Matt. 
25.31-46). There we hear the King recount 
a great number of good deeds which the 
blessed children at His right hand have done 
but not a single one of their sins. How does 
this come? Have these never had any sins? 
Mark, then, here for once, that the Lord God 
is in earnest and means His words on for¬ 
giveness of sins—that there is earnestness 
and truth in His words: “I will not remem¬ 
ber thy sins.” Christ solemnly declares: 
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that hear- 
eth my word, and believeth him that sent 
me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into 
judgment, but hath passed out of death into 
life” (John 5.24). 


113 


And do not now forget, that all which we 
have considered here is not vain words, but 
the holy covenant of the eternal, unchange¬ 
able God. Not merely has God given us a 
word concerning grace—which nevertheless 
ought to weigh more than heaven and earth, 
since it, of course, is impossible for God to 
lie (Hebr. 6.18)—but in addition, for yet 
furtl er certainty, He has made it a covenant 
and testament. And this is established and 
confirmed with the oath of His majesty. 
For,, says the apostle, “God, being minded 
to show more abundantly unto the heirs of 
the promise the immutability of his counsel, 
interposed with an oath; that by two immut¬ 
able things, in which it is impossible for God 
to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, 
who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the 
hope set before us” (Hebr. 6.17, 18). And 
the Lord God often speaks of this covenant 
of His, calls it a covenant of peace (Ez. 
37.26), and says expressly that it shall be 
an everlasting covenant (Ez. 37.26; Is. 55.3). 
And He adds that it shall be as immovable as 
the covenant which He made with Noah, that 
the waters should no more go over the earth, 
“so have I sworn that I will not be wroth 
with thee” (Is. 54.9). That God keeps the 
former covenant no more to drown the earth 
with waters, we most certainly believe; but 


The Believer. 8 . 


114 


that He never will reckon our sins to us 
believers—this we do not believe with equal 
certainty and firmness. But the Lord God 
declares again and again: “For the moun¬ 
tains may depart, and the hills be removed; 
but my lovingkindness shall not depart from 
thee, neither shall my covenant of peace be 
removed” (Is. 54.10). Oh, we ought, indeed, 
to let such divine assurances come home to 
our hearts, let the great, good God be a 
truthful God, and rest upon His covenant 
with hearty security. We have great reasons 
for doing so; yes, we have as great reasons 
for peace and security from the wrath of 
God as ever the blessed angels in heaven; 
and “in heaven no angel trembles before 
God,” an old teacher has said. “Yes,” you 
say, “the angels are sinless.” Certainly, but 
God’s everlasting covenant in His Son must 
be just as firm a ground of security as an 
angel’s purity! Christ is more than all angels. 
As surely as God does not lie in all His gospel 
concerning the giving of His Son for us, and 
the everlasting grace through His merit, so 
surely He will not reckon to believers a single 
sin unto condemnation. Or would God undo 
that which during thousands of years He has 
proclaimed in so many ways and so sacredly 
affirmed? Would God reject His own ran¬ 
som money. His beloved Son ? Then I, too, 


115 




wish to be rejected. Would God break His 
own oath? God preserve us from blasphemy. 

What blessed security, what heavenly Sab¬ 
bath rest and quietude for the wearied heart 
of a sinner when the Holy Spirit makes such 
circumstances living in the soul! It is of this 
that the prophet speaks: “And the work of 
righteousness shall be peace; and the effect 
of righteousness, quietness and confidence 
for ever. And my people shall abide in a 
peaceable habitation, and in safe dwellings, 
and in quiet resting-places”(Is. 32.17, 18). It 
is of this the apostle speaks: “Ye received not 
the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye 
received the spirit of adoption, whereby we 
cry, Abba, Father” (Rom. 8.15). And this 
is that freedom of the conscience from the 
Law, which, to be sure, is not as perfect as 
the one we actually and in God’s heart own— 
for our faith is imperfect; but our freedom 
from having sin reckoned to us in the heart 
of God is entirely perfect. Nevertheless even 
the freedom of our conscience is an important 
matter, which ought to be attended to with all 
care. For it is this freedom, or child-confi¬ 
dence, which is the life and heart itself of 
the new man, as also the life and power in all 
sanctification, as we have previously shown. 
And, besides, this peace of faith is the high¬ 
est praise we can render to God for all His 
grace, the highest and most pleasing honor 
we can show Him. 


IX 


The Final Application 

May all Christians, therefore, lay to heart 
the final admonition, given by the apostle to 
the Galatians, when he explained to them the 
freedom from the Law. With this admoni¬ 
tion we, too, now wish to close. It reads as 
follows: 

“For freedom did Christ set as free: stand 
fast therefore, and be not entangled again in 
a yoke of bondage” (Gal 5.1). 

Even many upright Christians are still so 
ignorant of the real nature of the spiritual 
life that they do not attach much weight to 
this admonition, do not understand that it is 
essential to life and salvation, but imagine 
that the good apostle by this only reveals the 
particularly devoted interest which he takes 
in the peace and well-being of the Galatians. 
For even in our own day a preacher of the 
gospel is often estimated in that same manner. 
They do not understand that their spiritual 
life is in any danger if the conscience is 
dragged down and made captive under the 

116 


117 


yoke of bondage. May God awaken all such 
souls out of their error! The apostle has 
another understanding of the case. He makes 
this admonition so exceedingly important that 
he says that if you only lose your freedom 
of conscience and become captive under the 
Law, and begin to seek your righteousness 
in your own works, or expect life and sancti¬ 
fication from the Law (Gal. 3.2, 5), you have 
made “void the grace of God” (Gal. 2.21) 
and crucify Christ afresh (Hebr. 6.6; 
comp. Gal. 3.1). Then you “are perfected 
in the flesh” (v. 3), you are “under a curse” 
(v. 10), you are a “son of the handmaid,” and 
after all your service you shall be “cast out” 
(4.30). You “are severed from Christ,” 
you “are fallen away from grace” (5.4). 
And he says that this point is so delicate and 
sensitive that if you intentionally and pur¬ 
posely include ever so little of your own deeds 
as necessary for salvation, and do not let 
Christ alone be sufficient for that, faith is 
spoiled, “the lump leavened”; for this is what 
he means when he says: “A little leaven 
leaveneth the whole lump’ (v. 9). 

When our whole nature now leans so 
strongly toward self-righteousness, s e 1 f- 
significance in spiritual things, through the 
self-idolatry with which the serpent in the 
Fall filled man, so that nothing is so foolish 


118 


to the reason and mortifying to the heart as 
this that we are wholly incapable of the 
good, but as utterly lost must receive every¬ 
thing by grace, and as a gift, through Christ; 
then each one ought to understand that the 
danger of being made captive under the Law 
is not so slight as the ignorant think. Add to 
this, secondly, that our enemy, the devil, 
knows well that whatever else he may do to 
us, he has gained nothing essential so long 
as we still remain in the faith, in Christ our 
city of refuge; that then only will there be 
death, when the devil has succeeded in leading 
us from the love of Christ to our own labor 
in legal servitude and unbelief, so that life 
in the Son of God ceases. Yes, then there 
will be death, even if we retained the most 
beautiful life. Therefore we can in truth say 
that all the devil purposes with all his at¬ 
tacks and temptations, with all his hellish zeal, 
his deceit and power, finally aims at this, 
that he may lead us away from the good child- 
relation to God, from “the freedom for which 
Christ set us free,” and bring us into bondage 
and unbelief. Not without reason does the 
apostle use the word “entangle ”—it is a 
hunter who would “entangle” us— and if we 
only become entangled in the yoke of the 
Law’s bondage, we are also immediately bond- 
servants to the inner life of sin, yes, to the 
devil and death. 


119 


The devil can bring less experienced Chris¬ 
tians to this bondage in a very simple way, 
by merely pointing out that they still are 
sinners, and that God hates and judges sin. 
Here he now has two truths, by which, how¬ 
ever, he permits us to lead us from the sound 
truth. Although we are truly born again, 
and have a holy and willing spirit, by which 
we have become new men, the flesh, the old 
heart, is nevertheless filled with all the cor¬ 
ruption of sin which the Fall of Adam 
brought on, and which operates in countless 
directions, in thoughts, feelings, desires, words 
and deeds, in sluggishness toward the good, 
in cool indifference of the heart toward God 
and our neighbor, disinclination toward the 
Word and prayer, sinful emotions, and the 
like. Then the Word of God arises and con¬ 
demns all this, and still I am unable to free , 
myself from it; how shall I then be able to 
believe that I am in a constant grace and 
friendship with God? 

The temptation to despair and unbelief 
becomes especially severe when the devil puts 
before me God's ozvn words which seem to 
condemn me. First of all the Bible contains 
a great number of terrible threatenings 
against the secure, ungodly hypocrites. Since 
the world is full of these, the Word of God 
must, of course, contain a good deal for them. 


120 


But a soul that is poor in spirit, who is chas¬ 
tised by the Spirit, feels, indeed, all kinds of 
evil in himself and he says: “Yes, precisely, 
I am secure, I am ungodly, hypocritical, and 
so forth—for all this surely lies here in the 
old heart.” This the devil then uses to 
murder and destroy my poor faith. Further, 
since every Christian must hold in reverence 
the commandments of the Law as unchange¬ 
able rules of guidance, even though he is 
continually condemned by those very com¬ 
mandments, how can he then still believe that 
he stands in a constant grace and friendship 
with God? We were, or how? not only to 
know but also to fulfill the will of God. But 
in spite of everything which grace has worked 
in me, I can still not find that I fulfill the 
commandments of God; and so the judgment 
of the Law immediately comes upon my con¬ 
science. Oh, what grace and wisdom are 
here required, nay, what a miracle of God, 
what a mighty help of God, if we are to be 
able to remain firm of faith in God’s grace! 

It will here be quite necessary to consider 
deeply and thoroughly what God’s covenant 
of grace implies, namely that all these judg¬ 
ments and threats fall only on them who are 
without Christ —or fall merely on the sin itself 
and the outward man, but do not at all touch 
the state of grace itself, as long as I am under 


121 


Christ; and further, that God, to be sure, 
wishes by His Law to punish and correct that 
which is wrong in my life, yes, even by 
external punishments and plagues pursue and 
slay my sins; but that I at the same time am 
in an eternal grace; that He is angry only 
at my enemy, sin, which I, too, after the 
spirit hate, but that He is not angry with me, 
who in Christ am perfectly free from all 
wrath, all the judgments and threats of the 
Law, have a constant forgiveness and am 
already inscribed in heaven as His child and 
heir. Christ very plainly indicated this, when 
He rebuked His disciples for their strife as 
to who among them was the greatest—a most 
disgusting sin—but at the same time, as if 
nothing had happened, speaks of their seats 
of honor in heaven (Luke 22.24-30). So 
also John says: “These things write I unto 
you, my little children, that ye may not sin. 
And if any man sin, we have an Advocate 
with the Father” (I John 2.1, 2). It was this 
alone he wished—that they might not sin; 
but if, alas, they did sin, they were to know, 
however, that they had an Advocate in 
heaven; of this comfort they should let no one 
rob them. How necessary is it not to con¬ 
sider this distinction deeply and thoroughly, 
this, to let the commandments and threats of 
the Law fall only on the sin, but not on our 


122 


child-confidence in God, and to retain our 
certainty of everlasting grace through Christ. 
This is the true freedom from the Law. 

The pious Spener has spoken of this 
with much thoughtfulness and caution. He 
says: “The believers are free from the 
Law in this sense, that they have a per¬ 
fect and constant forgiveness of their sins. 
And it is to be noted that this forgive^ 
ness consists of two points. First, that 
those sins which man committed before 
his conversion when he was not in a state of 
grace, and those sins by which, peradventure, 
he once lost his state of grace, are, if he again 
becomes converted and comes to Christ, so 
perfectly forgiven, however great they may 
have been, that of them shall no more be 
made a remembrance. Secondly, the forgive¬ 
ness consists in this, that as long as man 
stands in the faith, and consequently does not 
willfully serve sin, all his indwelling corrup¬ 
tion and his sins of frailty, which still cling 
to him and through which he errs, whether 
it be through omission, or imperfect doing of 
the good, or through sinful desires, thoughts, 
words, and deeds (which if he were not in 
Christ, would be condemnable), all these 
sins God by His divine grace does not reckon 
against him, but for Christ’s sake passes over 
them, just as if they had never been com- 


123 


mitted. This is the fundamental thought in 
the words of Paul: “There is therefore now 
no condemnation to them that are in Christ 
Jesus—who walk not after the flesh, but after 
the Spirit” (Rom. 8.1, 4). Consequently 
they still have the flesh remaining, which in 
and by itself is subject to the curse of the 
Law; the flesh still incites them to walk after 
its instincts, awakens in them therefore evil 
lusts and desires, and at times even gains some 
advantage over them, so that actual sins arise, 
which in themselves would merit a curse. 
But because they still are in Christ Jesus, from 
whom nothing but unbridled sinning and un¬ 
belief can separate them, such sins are to 
them, for Christ’s sake, not unto condemna¬ 
tion. For they themselves are not under the 
Law. There exists here a matchless bliss, 
without which our other comfort would be 
altogether too weak. For even if we other¬ 
wise knew that our sins, even such great sins 
which now are long since past, were forgiven 
us, when in true repentance we acknowledged 
them and sought forgiveness, we could, how¬ 
ever, not even one single moment do anything 
else but pray for forgiveness, because no 
moment passes during which we do not notice, 
or otherwise must fear, that we have sinned 
in one way or another, or at least have 
neglected some good, and hence our present 


124 


sins would always be at hand. This would 
then keep us in continual anguish and dis¬ 
couragement and never allow us to turn our 
faces with joy to God; and this would 
diminish our power for good. But this is 
our glorious comfort that as long as we stand 
in the faith (and consequently do not give 
sin the freedom it seeks), we are completely 
free from the Law; that the Law is not per¬ 
mitted to condemn us for our sins that still 
beset us, but God simply forgets them for 
Christ’s sake, as if they did not exist. As 
was said before, sins are in themselves always 
condemnable, but they are not reckoned 
against those who are in Christ. This does 
not do away with their humility and piety, on 
the contrary it increases them, and gives to the 
believers a glorious boldness of faith, which 
is the ground of all spiritual power.”— 
(SpivNEr.) 

Only it behooves us here not merely to 
understand and know this, but also earnestly 
to begin using this wisdom of ours when the 
actual warfare is on. And here we must 
make mention of a very destructive fault, 
which especially clings to certain younger 
and unsteady Christians—that they do not 
earnestly utilize their knowledge of God’s 
covenant of grace, when the enemy assails 
them through the Law and the conscience, but 


125 


walk mildly subject to every suggestion, and 
consequently are dependent on temporary 
impressions. This is not what is meant by keep¬ 
ing the Word of the Lord and establishing 
the heart in grace. We can not sufficiently 
praise the wisdom speaking in a sermon of 
Luther, where he teaches us how we may 
answer the Law and the devil when we are 
unrighteously attacked in the conscience 
(Luther., third Sunday after Trinity). With 
many and powerful words he here shows how 
necessary it is to distinguish between two 
things, conscience and life, faith and walk. 
When it is a matter of faith and conscience, 
we are not to give room to any Law, provided 
we wish to stand fast in the freedom, but 
let that be perfectly settled that in us there 
is sin constantly, and that before the Law our 
righteousness is at an end, but that we have 
an entirely different righteousness, in which 
we can stand before God, namely, that the 
Son of God has been under the Law for us, 
and has also become a curse for us. On the 
other hand, when it is a matter of our life 
and walk, we are to accept with all submission 
the reproofs and corrections of the Law, and 
can then never give sufficient heed to God’s 
commandments. In the faith and in the con¬ 
science we are to live as free “as if no Law 
had been given on earth, neither one nor ten 


126 


commandments,” but when it is a matter of 
life, we are to be as slaves, not because of 
the threats of the Law or because of the 
promises, but of fervent desire and love, of 
joyous, hearty thankfulness for our precious 
freedom from the judgments of the Law. 

“In this way,” says Luther, “a Christian 
must learn so to rule his conscience before 
God, as not to permit himself to be ensnared 
by any Law, but whenever any one seeks to 
assail his faith by the Law let him defend 
himself against it, and do as Christ does here 
and in other places where He shows himself 
in His course so firm, singular, and strange, 
that neither Moses nor any zealot of the Law 
can move Him, although He otherwise is the 
most humble, the most gentle and friendly 
of men. Let us do likewise. But it is a 
difficult and great art, which no one but our 
Master knows perfectly. For the devil 
sports with our flesh and blood, when he 
grips man in his conscience and takes him to 
task for what he has done and for what he 
has not done.” Especially is this so, if he 

has first succeeded to lead him into some 

* 

grievous sin. He now tries to bring him to 
think that he is thereby completely fallen 
from grace and that he must experience 
something peculiar in his heart as the sign of 
a new pardon. And then this peculiar ex- 


127 


perience does not come, but rather, as is 
common when the conscience becomes bound 
in unbelief, the Law only works a peculiar 
dryness and deadness in the feelings. Or if 
a Christian, one beyond doubt in grace, is 
beset by a disposition very troublesome in 
certain respects which he never quite escapes, 
but, with all his weeping, praying and use of 
the means of grace, is still surprised by 
the sin which always “besets him/’ and the 
devil suggests to him that this is the same as 
the rule of sin, or to “do sin”—oh! in both 
these events the hellish enemy can frightfully 
torture a man and fill his whole soul day and 
night with a roaring din of threatenings by 
the wrath and curse of God, so that he 
believes that he is the most monstrous sinner 
on earth. 

How shall I in such severe circumstances 
escape being made captive under the Law? 
Aye, now it is a question of being furnished 
with the proper arms and of being able to 
“withstand the devil, steadfast in the faith,” 
and to answer: “If my sin even were still 
more terrible, my Lord Christ shall not be 
made a sinner. I will, none the less, render 
honor to His blood and His truth. I still 
remember the words of the everlasting 
Father: ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, 
they shall be white as snow, though they be 



128 


red like crimson, they shall be as wool’ (Is. 
1.18). Even if I for a long time may not 
feel anything special in my heart, I will, 
none the less, let His words be divine truth. 
Get thee hence from me, Satan! Sin shall 
not condemn me, as long as Christ lives. And 
if the sin were, as thou sayest to me, my own 
doing, I would no longer weep over it (Rom. 
7.20). And how dost thou, false spirit, 
wish in such a perverted way to make a saint 
of me, since thou speakest of my having 
sinned? Why, I have never pretended that 
I was sinless. My own righteousness before 
the Law is a thing of the past so that, as 
regards my pardon, what I am, or do, or have 
done counts for nothing. The only thing that 
counts here is what my Lord Christ has done 
for me, what He still is, and what He does 
as my Advocate with the Father. We are 
now in the bridal-chamber, where only the 
Bridegroom may be with the bride.” 

But the Law continues to knock at the door 
and says: But you ought nevertheless your¬ 
self, too, be pious and holy and keep the 
commandments of God, if you wish to be 
saved. Answer: It is true that I ought to 
be holy and keep the commandments of God; 
but merely because you add the words, “If 
you wish to be saved,” I will not now listen 
to you at alL Because my conscience is 


129 


attacked by a condition for salvation taken 
from the Law, I wish to be rid of you entirely. 
For in the question as to my salvation my life 
does not count at all, simply because it is 
already settled that I am lost before the Law, 
but also that I have a perfect righteousness, 
in the abundant merit of my precious Bride¬ 
groom. He has for me fulfilled all which the 
Law could ever demand. I neither can, nor 
do I wish to appear before God with any 
other righteousness. Come at the right 
moment, when it is a question of my life, with 
your reminders. Remind me, for example, 
to be merciful, patient, humble, chaste, for¬ 
giving, and so on, when my neighbor needs 
anything of the like from me. But here, 
when it is a question of my relation to God, 
I will not listen to you, for then I have quite 
another righteousness, a perfect, yes, divine 
righteousness. Praised be the Name of my 
Lord Jesus. 

In this way a Christian may defend himself 
and prevail against the suggestions of the 
devil and the threatenings of the Law, 
whether for past or present sins, in this way, 
namely, that when the Law tries to attack 
the conscience, and to deny my state of grace, 
I then daringly beat him off, and say: I 
shall gladly do good works when I am among 
my fellow men, who need them; but here 

The Believer . 9. 


i 


130 


when my conscience is to stand before God, 
I will know nothing of that. For here my 
life and walk do not avail, but only my Lord 
Christ.—“But if it is here that I am lacking, 
that I do not do these good works among 
men as I ought, what then?” This is cer¬ 
tainly to be deplored and here it were well if 
some improvement took place—by a more 
watchful walk your conscience would also 
experience less severe attacks. But if you 
are to be saved, it is, nevertheless, needful, 
that you with all your power pierce through 
the thick cloud of contradictions and, despite 
all, let Christ count for more than all your 
poor being. Otherwise you will for ever 
perish. Through faith everything can be 
remedied; through unbelief there is naught 
but death and condemnation. 

Much more ought to have been said on this 
precious subject, yet we must leave it. We 
wish only to add that this lofty grace, free¬ 
dom from the Law, is not at all proclaimed to 
the hard, presumptuous and unbroken souls 
who know the art of believing and of being 
secure all too well, or to those who with a 
pretty evangelical confession also wish to 
retain full freedom for the flesh and to live 
as it pleases them. No, thus says the apostle: 
“As free, and not using your freedom for a 
cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of 


v 


131 


God” (I Pet. 2.16). As to the flesh, true 
Christians are, alas! indeed, weak, so that 
they, too, can err and fall miserably but there 
is in them however a God-fearing spirit which 
cheerfully accepts admonition and seeks 
improvement. But they, on the other hand, 
who wish by their advocacy of evangelical 
freedom to defend a carnal life conformed to 
the world, have not the Spirit of the Lord. 

But the apostle Paul admonishes even the 
believers not to allow the false heart to lead 
them astray into the misuse of this precious 
freedom. He says: ‘‘For ye, brethren, were 
called for freedom; only use not your freedom 
for an occasion to the flesh, but through love 
be servants one to another” (Gal. 5.13). 

Oh, that all the children of God might in 
time take to heart also this admonition! It 
is a common sickness, or perversion, of our 
minds, that we are bound where we should 
be free—in the conscience; and altogether too 
free where we should be bound—in the flesh. 
Let us watch! Since we have an everlasting 
freedom from the judgments of the Law, let 
us fervently love the commandments of the 
Law so that with cheerful mind we serve our 
neighbor in love, with words, deeds, and pa¬ 
tience. Let us beware lest we grieve the Holy 
Spirit by sins against His holy command¬ 
ments. Watch and pray and flee when you 


y 


132 


see the temptation approaching. Flee cheer¬ 
fully and willingly, since God is eternally 
gracious toward you and opens His bosom to 
you. But if you have been so hapless as to 
fall, know that you have an “Advocate with 
the Father,” and you shall not perish if you 
flee to Him and seek restoration, grace and 
comfort, and a new purpose to watch more 
earnestly hereafter. 

Such, then, our whole way will be.. The 
Lord be with us on that way, and protect us 
both on our right hand and on our left hand ! 


Rise from thy stupor, heart so uneasy; 

Why so completely forget what thou hast? 

Christ is forever 
Thy loving Saviour, 

He's still the same as He was in the past. 

Though thou at times can not feel it, nor see it, 
Though so unholy and sinful within, 

Jesus hath bought thee, 

And mercy brought thee, 

And still upholds thee, and saves thee from sin. 

God is in Christ now thy Friend and thy Father; 
Jesus thy Brother on Calvary died; 

And by His merit 
Has sent His Spirit, 

To be thy Strength, and thy Comfort, and Guide. 

Carl Olof Rosfnius (j8i6— 1868). 







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